ISUsjnttgion fibrarg 



IlIBRARY OF CONGRESS.! 



I <gay*. .8.1 LIP I | 

# JMe// >.K 2- * 



{UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I ' * 

jerom April, ioua, to ins aeaxii, April 18, 1853. 



This valuable Library, containing 980 volumes, was 
presented to the Washington Ltbraby, of which Dr. 
Laurie was one of the founders, by his step son, Dr. 
James C. Hall, March 3, 1858. 






M 



3*. 



DEMONSTRATION 



THE TRUTH 



CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 

BY ALEXANDER KEITH, D.D. 

AUTHOR OF "THE EVIDENCE OF PROPHECV," &C. 



11 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord." — Isa. i., 8. 
" Where is the wise ? where is the scribe ? where is the disputer of this 
world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?"— 1 Cor. i., 20. 



FROM THE SECOND EDINBURGH EDITION. 



NEW-YORK: j\ 

HARPER AND BROTHERS, CLIFF-STREET. 

1844. 




2%> 



TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 

LORD BEXLEY, 

IN TESTIMONY OF CHRISTIAN ESTEEM, AND IN GRATEFUL 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF PERSONAL QUALIFICATIONS, 

THIS TREATISE 
fff respectfully fuscvtfceti 

BY HIS LORDSHIP^ FAITHFUL SERVANT, 

THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 



In adducing and applying the scriptural prediction and 
refutation of the great argument which scoffers in the last 
days have so strenuously urged against the credibility of 
miracles, the writer of these pages intimated, above seven 
years ago (Evidence of Prophecy, 6th edition), that it was 
his purpose to give a more full consideration to the subject 
in " a general and connected view of the Evidences of 
Christianity, which he was preparing for the press, and 
which he hoped to be able to compress into a small com- 
pass, in the form of a manual." His pen, however, was 
of necessity laid aside, owing to sudden and continued 
illness; and long ceased to be, if it had ever been, that 
of a " ready writer." And it has only been at different 
intervals and in diverse places, to which the state of his 
health required his removal, that he has been enabled to 
complete the essay. 

Though the feebleness of the hand has, he fears, been 
often transferred to the page, yet the inadequate advocacy 
of the truth may happily serve so much the more to show 
that the strength rests solely in the cause. The frailty of 
an earthen vessel cannot deteriorate from the preciousness 
of the treasure which it bears. The author has simply 
sought to exhibit how speedily and easily, when brought 
into close contact, truth triumphs over error. A " general" 
view of the evidence, as once he proposed, he has not at- 
tempted to give. And that task is less needful since the 
recent publication, in a very cheap form, of the excellent 
lectures on the Evidences of Revealed Religion by minis- 

A2 



VI PREFACE, 

ters of Glasgow. But the author trusts that the view of the 
Evidences given in the following pages will be found to be 
so " connected," that the relative connexion and union of 
the separate parts will prove to be a multiplication of the 
power of each, as the compound far excels the simple lever 
And were it to be the instrument of removing doubts from 
the skeptic's mind, and of confirming the faith of the be- 
liever, the writer would thankfully yield the praise which 
is ever due to the God of grace and truth, who alone can 
turn from darkness to light, and perfect strength in weak- 
ness. 

St. Cyrus, July, 1838. 



CONTENTS. 

Introduction ......... Page 13-17 

CHAPTER I. 

Existing Proofs of the Inspiration of the Jewish Prophets . . 18-52 

CHAPTER II. 

The appropriation of Hume's Arguments against Miracles, as foretold and 
confuted in Scripture ; its Fallacy shown from the Fact that the Laws of 
Nature are not unalterable, but have been altered ; itself a Proof of Pro- 
phetic Inspiration, on the uniform Experience of the Truth of which rests 
the Testimony of Jesus ........ 52-83 

CHAPTER III. 

The Antiquity and Authenticity of the Old Testament Scriptures, in four 
Sections ; concurring Testimony from universal Tradition, existing Facts, 
Names of Cities and Persons, ancient Institutions, &c. ; Objections drawn 
from Geology refuted by comparing the Mosaic Account of the Creation 
of the Heavens and the Earth with the Observations and Discoveries 
both of Astronomers and Geologists 83-150 

CHAPTER 17. 

Connexion between the Old Testament and the New, as shown by the Tes- 
timony of the Prophets to the coming of a Messiah, and consequent Ex- 
pectation of his coming, throughout the whole East, at the Commence- 
ment of the Christian Era 150-100 

CHAPTER V. 

The Origin and Progress of Christianity, according to the Testimony of 
Heathen Writers ; Comparison of the Accounts given by them with those 
of Scriptures 160-180 

CHAPTER VI. 

Genuineness of the New Testament Scriptures, as written by the Evange- 
lists and Apostles of Jesus. Continuous and numerous Quotations from 
the New Testament by Christian Writers ; their Testimony to the Facts 
recorded in Scripture, and its Confirmation by their Sufferings and Mar- 
tyrdom as witnesses to the Truth 180-217 

CHAPTER VII. 

Appropriation of the Arguments of Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian, in Proof 
of the Genuineness of the New Testament and the Messiahship of Je- 
gus 217-261 



<* 



till CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIIL 

Of the Authenticity of the New Testament Scriptures . Page 261-283 

CHAPTER IX. 

Testimony of the Prophets to the Messiahship of Jesus . . 283-329 

APPENDIX. . . .331-336 



LIST OF ENGRAVINGS. 



Map, Frontispiece. Page 

Illustrations of the Elevation of Strata 64 

Jewish Brickmakers 101 

Mount Hor, Aaron's Tomb . . .102 

Arch of Titus . 120 

Plate I. (Astronomical) 126 

11 130 

III. 132 

Fossil Plants . 136 

' Do . ib. 

Fossil Tree . . ib. 

Plate IV. (Astronomical) 137 

V 139 

VI . 146 



DEMONSTRATION 



TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 



DEMONSTRATION 



TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, 



INTRODUCTION. 

It may seem to be alike superfluous in itself and pre- 
sumptuous in the author to add another to the already nu- 
merous treatises on the evidences of Christianity. It needs, 
however, but little observation to discern that the subject is 
far from being exhausted. Though an imposture might be 
palmed upon the world, and many cunning devices may give 
it the semblance of truth; yet, as these are successively de- 
tected and exposed, the investigation becomes complete ; and 
one hollow prop after another is subverted by rational inquiry, 
till the whole fabric of falsehood sinks into the darkness from 
whence it sprung. It is far otherwise with truth, which can 
never be disproved. Its own nature is not altered, however 
much men may disguise, misrepresent, or disbelieve it. The 
more rigidly and impartially it is scrutinized, the more clearly 
it is confirmed. Doubts and difficulties, engendered by igno- 
rance, disappear on a full investigation. The refutation of 
objections creates new proof. Whenever conviction is well- 
founded and sure, a reason, in respect to evidence, is ready 
to be given in answer to every question. In these days of 
inquiry and discovery, it has passed into an adage or proverb, 
that truth is great and will prevail. And, as truth cannot ul- 
timately be but on the side of truth, when any facts are stated 
as militating against it, their proper relation to the subject 
has only to be established, that they may add to the confirm- 
ation of the truth. And, after all the labours of unbelievers, 
it is even thus with the Christian faith. Every assault has 
served to strengthen it. No weapon against it has prospered. 
Every renewed investigation has rendered its evidence more 
complete. Time in its progress leaves many a witness on 
its behalf; and while the corruptions of Christianity may be 
successfully assailed, and their overthrow become an addi- 
tional triumph of the truth over error, all the powers of dark- 
le 



14 INTRODUCTION, 

ness cannot prevail against the light of the gospel; but the 
evidence of its truth, like the path of the just to which it 
leads, is as the shining light, that shxneth more and more unto 
the perfect day. 

No sooner was Christianity promulgated, than the cross 
of Christ became a stumbling-block to the Jews, and was 
accounted foolishness by the Greeks. And, in the early ages, 
apologies, or pleadings in defence of its truth, were written 
in refutation of the objections then urged against it by the 
inveterate hatred of the Jews, and the subtle philosophy 
which idolized a pompous paganism, and scoffed at the sim- 
plicity of the gospel. The arguments of the first writers 
who publicly attacked it— though known chiefly by the refu- 
tations with which they were speedily met — have been as 
confidently urged anew, in modern times, as if they had 
never been answered, and could not be confuted. And in 
the late age of infidelity, the darkness of which still broods 
over a great part of the earth, not a single field has been left 
unexplored wherein an objection could be gleaned ; and not 
an effort, from the most refined speculations to the coarsest 
ribaldry, has been untried against the Christian religion. Its 
enemies cannot say that it is from the want of numerous and 
powerful assailants that it has remained unshaken. Infidel- 
ity, in point of argument, has tried its worst ; though in start- 
ing objections it has led to the production of evidence, and 
in tampering with facts has unwittingly substantiated the 
truth. And, were it not that the praise is unmerited, because 
the service was unmeant, the friends of religion might well 
pay as thankful an acknowledgment to unbelievers for their 
abundant and beneficial labours, as to the defenders of the 
truth, for the truth's sake, who need not the commendation 
of man. But it were worse than mockery for the Christian 
to render thanks to either, if not deeply impressed with 
heartfelt gratitude to God, who, overruling all things, brings 
good out of evil, and, taking the cunning in their craftiness, 
brings light out of darkness, because, in his Providence, it 
has happened that the enemies of the truth have ultimately 
become its unconscious supporters, and that, in vindicating 
the Christian faith, the task is now easy and the time of apol- 
ogy is past. 

From other causes than want of evidence, it may be as 
impracticable as ever to convince gainsayers, who, as at first, 
will not believe the doctrine of Jesus, because it is truth. 
But their arguments must be refuted, and their mouths must 
be stopped. And it is not for those who have to contend ear- 
nestly for the faith to act only on the defensive. Much of the 
Christian evidence is in its nature aggressive, and as such it 
should be used. But the truth has been assailed as if it had 
been a lie ; and infidels, by the frequency and boldness of 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

their attacks, have assumed a seeming strength and triumph 
to which they have no claim, except in leading captive the 
willing mind, deceiving and being deceived. Their victims have 
been many. They have assailed every bulwark of Christian- 
ity and threatened to raze them, till, like the temple of Jeru- 
salem, not a stone should be left upon another. And assu- 
ming the victory of infidelity to be complete, they denomina- 
ted the period of its greatest prevalence the age of reason ! 
Christians may surely copy the zeal of their enemies, and 
realize against them their highest pretensions. The weap- 
ons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty, through God, 
to the pulling down of strongholds ; and they need but to be 
rightly wielded in order to put to flight the armies of the 
aliens. And, in the warfare of the enemies of Zion, under 
the banner of him who leadeth captivity captive, any " sol- 
dier of Christ" thus armed may brave the boldest of the 
chiefs of skepticism, and lead them captive in the cause of 
truth. After the utmost rage of the enemy has been exhib- 
ited, and all their strength exhausted, the faithful host that 
long withstood them unbroken, and repelled every assault, 
may in turn become the assailants, trusting to the God of 
truth in whose strength they stand, that the victory will final- 
ly be the more completely their own. Though Goliaths, 
as of old, have defied the armies of the living God, and dis- 
mayed the faint-hearted in Israel, yet at the last even they 
can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth ; by their 
own words they must be confuted, and by their own swords 
they must be slain. 

In order to come at once to common ground with gainsay- 
ers, it is best to meet them on their own, and to show both 
the right and the might by which Christians have and hold it. 
Nothing is to be assumed or supposed, where, however rea- 
sonable, nothing will be conceded ; but adducing facts as 
proofs, and enemies as witnesses, and their very arguments 
as our needful reasons, the feeblest advocate of the Christian 
faith — beginning with admitted, positive, undeniable, existing, 
and visible facts reclaimed from our foes, and advancing con- 
nectedly from proof to proof at every point — may as freely 
disclaim all need, as the most unyielding skeptic would deny 
him all right, of commencing and conducting an investigation 
into the absolute verity of his faith, on any assumption or 
supposition whatever. And through means which God has 
given, and proofs which, in his overruling Providence, ene- 
mies have supplied, a body of evidence may be adduced 
Avhich renders any supposition needless, and sets all objec- 
tions at defiance ; the gospel may be vindicated as the word 
of Him who truly said of his kingdom, "Whosoever shall 
fall on this stone shall be broken ; but on whomsoever it shall 
fall it will grind him to powder ;" and aught less than a dem- 



16 INTRODUCTION. 

onstration of the truth of Christianity would be a disparage- 
ment of the faith that is nothing less than divine. 

Abundant as are the materials for the construction of such 
an irrefragable argument, yet additional evidence is still ac- 
cumulating. While the progress of physical science dis- 
closes the works of the God of nature, it illustrates also the 
truth of his word. The very objections of ignorance become 
the arguments of knowledge. And, as superstition is shaken, 
true religion is confirmed. And the labours of all the ene- 
mies of the truth, in seeking to confound Christianity with 
its corruptions, or to subvert them together, is only the clear- 
ing away of the rubbish which has too long obscured the rock 
on which the church of Christ is built ; and that man must 
know but little of the spirit of the times, and be ill-instructed 
unto the kingdom of Heaven, who, in seeking to illustrate the 
truth of the gospel, could not readily bring forth out of his 
treasure things new as well as old. 

" Things old" must necessarily be brought forth, though 
every Christian rnight rightfully reckon them in his treasures, 
and the Christian faith would be left without defenders if 
these were not still adduced, as they have been in ages past, 
times without number. But something " new" may be found 
in the arrangement, combination, and connexion of the evi- 
dence, in the application of many of the facts on which it 
rests, the introduction of others, and in the adoption and use 
of the arguments of our adversaries. 

So liberally have unbelievers unconsciously repaid in facts 
their idle scoffings against the prophecies, that they have fur- 
nished the means of demonstrating their inspiration, sufficient 
singly to form a sure foundation whereon to rest the whole 
superstructure of Christian evidence. 

In the following treatise, existing facts, which any man may 
witness, abundantly supply, in the first place, a palpable dem- 
onstration that the prophets of old spake by inspiration of 
omniscient God. The great infidel argument urged in modern 
times against the credibility of miracles, is next — as recorded 
and refuted in Scripture— appropriated and applied as Chris- 
tian evidence, and as involving the principle on which mira- 
cles give proof of revelation. The way is thus doubly pre- 
pared for illustrating the credibility of the Old Testament 
and of the New ; the former as heralding the Messiah, and 
preparatory of his coming ; the latter as recording concern- 
ing Christ and the Christian religion, the things which Moses 
and the prophets did say should come. The leading sentiment 
which pervades, connects, and illumines the whole, is, that 
the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Associated 
with this theme, other proofs, not wholly destitute of novelty, 
are adduced in verification of the Jewish Scriptures. And 
the inspiration of these, together with the witness which they 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

bore of a coming Saviour, being manifestly set forth, the his- 
torical testimony borne to Jesus has only to take its proper 
place, and to be viewed in connexion with the testimony of 
the prophets, in order that not even a heathen could narrate 
facts respecting Christianity, or urge arguments against it, 
without thereby giving proofs of the Messiahship of Jesus 
The Christian testimony, though assuming a lower position 
in the order of evidence than that which it generally occu- 
pies, is thus endowed with a far higher power than any testi- 
mony could exclusively possess, and is neither to be evaded 
nor resisted. And, finally, the authenticity of the records 
being established, a comparison between the prophecies and 
the gospel sets demonstration before the eye — as the Spirit 
by whom the prophets spake can alone bring conviction to 
the heart, in believing unto righteousness — that Jesus and the 
Messiah, as well as the doctrine of the gospel and the prom- 
ised salvation, are alike one and the same. 

Instead of exhausting the subject of the evidence of Chris- 
tianity, scarcely a tithe of it is touched on in the following 
pages, as many excellent and voluminous treatises may tes- 
tify. It has been the writer's purpose to show that Christi- 
anity, in all reason, is accredited as divine so soon as it is 
rightly seen even in a single view, or in its due relationship, 
in part, to Judaism. Its adaptation to the nature, or its ade- 
quateness, when truly embraced, to the salvation of man, is 
a theme with which he purposed to close the present essay, 
as showing forth in still brighter form the Divine handiwork 
and heavenly beauty of the inner sanctuary. But even a step 
or two into the outer court affords demonstration that the 
workmanship is of God. If enabled to advance a step far- 
ther, it may yet be the author's privilege, as it is his hope, to 
cast another mite into the Christian treasury. If his present 
labour — often wrought out in much weakness, and always in 
conscious inadequacy for so great a cause — may be prized, 
at that rate, by Him who looked not unpityingly or unappro- 
vingly on the widow's mite, the commendation or the cen- 
sure, the flattery or the calumnies of man would be all alike un- 
worthy of a thought. And if any gain, however small, hence 
accrue to the Christian cause — if God's word has in any way 
been magnified, while the wisdom, the pride, and the power 
of those who set themselves against it has been brought low, 
even to the ground — none can rejoice more than the writer 
of these pages in the renewed illustration thereby given to 
the Scriptural truth, that God hath chosen the foolish things 
of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the 
world to confound the things that are mighty, that no flesh 
should glory in his presence. 

B 2 



18 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE 



CHAPTER I. 

EXISTING PROOFS OF THE INSPIRATION OF THE JEWISH PROPHETS. 

So abundant and obvious are the proofs of the want of 
true faith in a Redeemer from all iniquity, and so clear and 
conclusive, when impartially and fully investigated, are the 
evidences of Christianity, that it is infinitely more needful 
to urge on professing Christians compliance with the Scrip- 
tural precept, to examine themselves whether they be in the 
faith, than to ask the unbeliever to abate one jot of his skep- 
ticism, till, if not altogether inveterate, it yield to positive 
evidence and demonstrative proof. 

It is one great office of reason to distinguish between truth 
and error, to weigh the evidence which may be adduced on 
both sides of a question, and rejecting that which is false, 
and adhering to that which is true, to judge what is right, 
and, trying all things, to hold fast what is good. While the 
undisguised enemies of the Christian religion have main- 
tained, in contradiction to these Christian precepts, that it 
is not to be defended on the principles of human reason, nor 
fitted by any means to undergo such a trial, the decision may 
be left to the arbitrament of reason, whether the disbelief of 
the truth of Christianity be not of all things the most irra- 
tional as well as dangerous. Man has more understanding 
than the beasts that perish ; and, in the exercise of that high 
faculty of our nature, it behooves him, undeceived either by 
vain imaginations or false pleasures, to see that — in the way 
in which he is going or in which others would lead him — 
he neither go nor be led like an ox to the slaughter, or be as 
a bird that hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for 
his life* 

" A wise man," says Hume, " proportions his belief to the 
evidence :" and we ask no other rule for the confirmation 
of faith and the extinction of skepticism. Let us thus rea- 
son together from the first line to the last ; let faith be pro- 
portioned to evidence ; let the testimony of enemies be 
heard ; let facts be looked at ; and let the most direct infer- 
ences be drawn in the plainest exercise of unbiased rea- 
son, and every reader may decide for himself, on the sound- 
est dictates of an enlightened judgment, on which side, to 
an absolute certainty and entire conviction, the truth must 
lie, in respect to the question here to be discussed, whether 
that which was spoken by the prophets of old has come or 
not, or whether they spake as the Spirit gave them utter- 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 19 

ance, or out of the imaginations of their own hearts. We 
speak as unto " wise men" judge ye what we say. 

Holding to the principle of rejecting, as entirely unneces- 
sary, any preliminary assumption or supposition, we begin 
with the ocular demonstration given by existing facts to the 
inspiration of the Old Testament prophets, whose writings 
were translated into Greek above three hundred and forty 
years before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. 

Reason and Scripture alike warrant that the precedence 
in the Christian testimony should now be given to visible 
facts, which at the end do speak and cannot lie, and are not 
to be gainsaid. A divine doctrine might be taught, and yet 
the question be asked, Who hath believed our report 1 Hu- 
man testimony may have been borne to it in ages past by a 
thousand tongues, and written by a thousand pens, and the 
same question be as often repeated. The light might shine 
in darkness, and yet the darkness comprehend it not. But 
though men will not judge what is right, nor, if told, believe 
what is true, yet if they close not their eyes, and wilfully 
choose the darkness rather than the light, they must see 
what is set before their eyes, not in abstract forms, but in 
palpable facts. It is thus that the truth of the word of the 
Lord by the prophets may be seen ; and the prediction more 
frequently repeated than any other, and affixed to many 
threatened judgments, may itself be thus verified — they 
shall know that I am the Lord. 

" If by a prophet," says Paine, " we are to suppose a 
man to whom the Almighty communicated some event that 
would take place in future, either there were such men or 
there were not. If there were, it is consistent to believe 
that the event so communicated would be told in terms that 
could be understood." It is the purpose of this chapter to 
show that there were such men ; because the events com- 
municated to them were told in terms not only easy to be 
understood, but impossible to be misapprehended ; because 
the events were also such as no foresight or sagacity of 
man could ever have discovered or conceived ; and because 
that, instead of having to be searched for in the records of 
a high antiquity, they have, in manifold instances, been re- 
cently or newly ascertained, so that all controversy may be 
here cut short by abundantly adducing existing facts and 
modern discoveries in literal fulfilment of manifold prophe- 
cies, the antiquity of which, as preceding these events, is 
altogether indisputable. 

To accumulate opposing facts is not the worst mode of 
subverting wild and baseless theories ; and positive proof 
may safely be set against unsubstantial and fanciful objec- 
tions. The prophets of Israel have all been stigmatized as 
" impostors and liars," and the book as " a book of lies f 



20 EXISTING PROOFS OP THE 

their writings, those especially of Isaiah, have been desig- 
nated as " bombastical rant, full of extravagant metaphor, 
without application, and destitute of meaning." But, as 
every reader must see on comparing the predictions with 
their respective events, our enemies being witnesses, that 
which so far surpassed all conjecture as to be deemed ex- 
travagant metaphor, is uniformly made manifest to be the 
literal truth ; and words could not have a clearer meaning 
or more precise application than those prophecies, of which, 
after the lapse of many ages, we now see the fulfilment. 

In a guilty world, where his laws are transgressed and 
his word is disregarded, the Lord is known by the judgment 
which he executes. In the development of them, so great a 
change in manifold instances has passed on human things, 
that these have become the reverse of what they were ; and, 
in token that mercy rejoiceth against judgment, they shall 
yet again, as predicted, be the reverse of what they are. 
From one extreme to another, their changeful forms are 
ever shaped, in their appointed time, according to the pro- 
phetic word. And, while past history is a corroboration of 
that word, when the desolations of many generations shall be 
raised up, all flesh shall know that He, who hath spoken it 
and caused it to be done, is the Lord. But, restricting our 
view to existing facts, the inspiration of the prophets of Is- 
rael may be visibly and vividly demonstrated. In the latter 
days we may consider it perfectly. And we may come and 
see the desolations which, because of iniquity, the Lord 
hath wrought in the earth. Ancient cities and kingdoms 
have borne " the burden" of his word. Before it, all the 
nations which in ancient times were the enemies of Israel, 
have been utterly destroyed, the Arabs excepted, who still 
dwell in the presence of their brethren. The Jews have 
been scattered among all nations, are yet dispersed in all 
countries, and distinct from every people ; and their unpar- 
alleled fate is a perfect parallel of the prophecies. Judea, 
Amnion, Moab, Edom, and Philistia, bear their brand in every 
feature. A plain, whereon fishers spread their nets, is the 
prophetic representative of princely Tyre. Cottages of shep- 
herds have supplanted the palaces of the lords of the Philis- 
tines ; and wherever the rest of the land has not been given 
up to the desert, folds for flocks occupy the places of the 
hosts of the enemies of Israel. The chief city of Amnion 
is a stable for camels ; that of Moab is a ruinous heap ; 
flocks lie down in the empty cities, and the wandering ten- 
ants of the desolate land flee for a refuge to the rocks. The 
temples of Petra are courts for owls ; and the word of the 
Lord against the capital of Edom, amid perpetual monu- 
ments of its ancient glory, is written with a pen of iron on 
the rock for ever. Babylon the great has been converted 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 21 

into heaps ; and its walls, utterly broken, have been swept 
from off the face of the earth ; and not a phantom evoked 
by vain fancy, but the spirit of prophecy, sits on every ruin, 
and each, as addressed, is an echo of its voice ; and the 
whole diversified and yet discriminated scene is one of the 
rolls of its literal testimony spread forth before the world at 
this hour, although all the combined intelligence of Europe 
was unequal to the task, at the beginning of the present 
century, of depicting the ruins of Babylon with half the 
accuracy with which the prophets of Israel delineated the 
grave, as now it lies, of, " the greatest city," as Pliny termed 
it, " on which the sun ever shone." 

"While the multiplicity of predictions respecting Judea 
and the adjacent regions of Syria demands our primary 
consideration, Volney, from the copiousness of his details 
and the discriminating nature of his descriptions, as well as 
from his inveterate hostility to the Christian cause, has a 
right to be a leading witness. The prophecies are so lumi- 
nous and apposite, that a word to point out their meaning or 
application would be superfluous. They are so numerous 
that, when viewed collectively, they in a great measure dis- 
claim the aid of farther argument to elucidate the inspiration 
of which they testify.. And in regard to the facts which 
render their fulfilment obvious, they are so striking and abun- 
dant as to render complete the triumph of truth over error. 
And as no man has contributed to this triumph so greatly as 
an enemy of the faith has unconsciously done, it is only need- 
ful to prefix a remark or two respecting the validity of his 
testimony, before we bring those facts which he himself 
has stated to refute the arguments which he and all others 
have urged against the inspiration of the Old Testament 
prophets. 

The name of Volney is too well known as that of a most 
zealous partisan and successful promoter of infidelity for 
the possibility of his testimony ever being objected to as 
partial to the Christian cause. It assuredly was no inten- 
tion of his to elucidate Scripture prophecy. And, wmatever 
his theoretical tenets may have been, his character is now 
universally established — and he stands indisputably in the 
very first rank — as an accurate and intelligent delineator of 
the various features of the countries which he visited, and 
the character, condition, and manners of the inhabitants. 
His Travels in Syria and Egypt are justly characterized as 
" a treatise on the country which he visited ;" " an admirable 
book," and of " extraordinary merit."* And the following 
" testimony of great value" is given by the Hon. Mountstuart 
Elphinstone, late Governor of Bombay, in his " Account of 

* Edinburgh Review, No, 50, p. 417. 



22 EXISTING PROOFS OF THll 

the Kingdom of Caubul." " Among many other talents, M. 
Volney possesses, in a remarkable degree, the merit of point- 
ing out what is peculiar in the manners and institutions of 
the East, by comparing and contrasting them with those of 
Europe. So far does he excel all other writers in this re- 
spect, that if one wishes thoroughly to understand other 
travellers in Mohammedan countries, it is necessary to have 
read Volney first."* And in reference to the fulness and ac- 
curacy of his descriptions, it must suffice to quote the follow- 
ing testimony of high and unqualified approbation, with 
which Malte-Brun, the first authority in geography, intro- 
duces his description of Syria and Palestine : 

" The countries belonging to Asiatic Turkey which re- 
main, to be described have so frequently attracted the atten- 
tion of travellers, that a large library might be formed of the 
accounts of them which have been published. Two or three 
volumes could scarce contain the names of the pilgrims who 
have left journals of their travels in the Holy Land ; works 
full of repetition and puerility, yet claiming the examination 
of the enlightened critic. From these, compared with the 
writings of Abulfeda and Josephus, the learned Busehing has 
formed an excellent geographical treatise. In modern times 
we have judicious missionaries, such as Dandini ; antiquaries, 
as Wood ; and naturalists, as Maundrel and Hasselquist, who 
have ably elucidated particular parts of these countries. It 
was reserved for the genius of Volney to combine their detached 
accounts with the fruits of his own observation and study, so 

as tO PRESENT THE WORLD WITH A COMPLETE DESCRIPTION OF 
SYRIA."f 

The description of Syria and Palestine given by Volney 
has not, therefore, to be considered as only that of a single 
eyewitness, but as the collation and combination of many 
accounts. But though he sojourned long in the land, and 
saw what he described ; though he might have searched into 
journals of travels so numerous that it would require a vol- 
ume to contain their names ; although the substance of these 
was made ready to his hand, and although his description of 
Syria be justly esteemed " a model," and accounted com- 
plete ; yet even he, after all his observation and study, how- 
ever satisfactory may be the result to the geographer, pre- 
sents not information sufficiently discriminating and copious 
to satisfy the inquirer who seeks, but seeks in vain, for any 
description of Syria so full and complete as to supply of it- 
self every predicted fact, or to cope with the vision of the 
prophets. To the evidence of Volney that of other and more 
recent travellers must therefore be superadded. 

* Edinburgh Review, No. 50, Elphinst one's Account of Caubul, p. 232. 
t Malte-Brun's Geography, vol, ii., p. 126. 



(JL%AJ^ 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 23 

It needs not a syllable to tell how clearly his description, 
which was written towards the close of the 18th century, 
and those of others, written in the present, accord with those 
prophecies, the latest of which were indisputably delivered at 
least several centuries before the Christian era, seeing that the 
perfect parallelism between the predictions and the events, 
in reference to Palestine and many countries besides, maybe 
thus set before the sight. 

The generation to come of " I journeyed in the empire 
your children that shall rise of the Ottomans, and traversed 
up after you, and the stran- the provinces, which formerly 
ger that shall come from a were kingdoms of Egypt and 
far land, when they see the Syria." " I wandered over the 
plagues of that land, and the country" — " I enumerated the 
sicknesses which the Lord kingdoms of Damascus and 
hath laid upon it, shall say, Idumea, of Jerusalem and Sa- 
Deut. xxix., 22. maria. This Syria, said I to 

myself, now almost depopu- 
lated, then contained a hun- 
dred flourishing cities, and 
abounded with towns, villages, 
and hamlets. What are be- 
come of so many productions 
of the hand of man? What 
are become of these ages of 
abundance and of life !" &c. — 
Volney's Ruins, c. i., 11, p. 1, 
2, 7. 
Wherefore hath the Lord " Great God ! from whence 
done this unto this land? Wliat proceed such melancholy rev- 
meaneth the heat of this great olutions 1 For what cause is 
anger 1 lb. 24. the fortune of these countries 

so strikingly changed ] Why 
are so many cities destroyed ? 
W T hy is not that ancient popu- 
lation reproduced and perpet- 
uated T'— 2Z>., c. ii., p. 8. 
I will scatter you among the The Jews, as all know, have 
heathen, and will draw out a been scattered among the hea- 
svvord after you: and your land then. "I have traversed this 
shall be desolate, Lev it. xxx\ r i., desolate country," says Vol- 
33. ney, Ruins, c. ii., p. 7. 

Then shall the land enjoy " Every day I found in my 
her Sabbaths (or rest, or be route fields abandoned by the 
untilled). plough."— lb., c. i. " The art 

of cultivation is in the most de- 
plorable state."— Volney's Trav- 
els, v, ii., p, 413, 



24 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE 

As long as it lieth desolate, " Why do these lands no 
and ye be in your enemies' Hand ; longer boast their former tern- 
even then shall the land rest, v. perature and fertility 1 Why 
34. The land also shall be left have these favours been trans- 
of them, and shall enjoy her ferred, as it were, for so many 
Sabbaths, or rest, while she ages, to other nations and dif- 
lieth desolate without them, v. ferent climes ?" — Volneifs Ru- 
43. They (the Jews on their ins, c, xi., p. 9. 
final return) shall raise up the 
former desolations, the desola- 
tions of many generations, Isa. 
lxi., 4. See, also, Isa. xxxiii., 
15 ; lviii., 12. Ezek. xxxvi., 24, 
25, 33-36; xxxviii., 8. Dan. 
ix., 27. Hosea, hi., 4. 

Your land, strangers devour " Within two thousand five 
it in your presence, and it is hundred years we may reckon 
desolate, as overthrown by ten invasions which have in- 
strangers, Isa. i., 7. troduced into Syria) a succes- 

sion of 'foreign nations."- — Vol- 
ney^s Travels, vol. i., p. 356. 
Destruction upon destruc- " Syria became a province 
tion is cried, Jer. iv., 20. Mis- of the Roman empire. In the 
chief shall come upon mischief, year 622 (636) the Arabian 
Ezek. vii., 21, 26. Tell your tribes, collected under the ban- 
children of it, and let your chil- ners of Mohammed, seized, or 
dren tell their children, and rather laid it waste. Since 
their children another genera- that period, torn to pieces by 
tion. For a nation is come up the civil wars of the Fatimites 
upon my land, strong and with- and the Ommiades, wrested 
out number, &c, Joel i. from the califs by their re- 

bellious governors, taken from 
them by the Turkmen soldiery, 
invaded by the European cru- 
saders, retaken by the Mame- 
lukes of Egypt, and ravaged 
by Tamerlane and his Tartars, 
it has at length fallen into the 
hands of the Ottoman Turks." 
— Volney's Travels, p. 357. 
I will give it into the hands Judea has been the scene 
of strangers for a prey, of frequent invasions " which 

have introduced a succession 

of foreign nations (des peuples 

etr angers)." — lb., p. 365. 

And into the wicked of the " When the Ottomans took 

earth for & spoil, Ezek. vii., 21. Syria from the Mamelukes, 

they considered it only as the 
spoil of a vanquished enemy. 
According to the law, the life 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 25 

and property of the vanquished 

belong to the conquerors." — 

lb.\ vol. ii., p. 370. 

The robbers shall enter into " The government is far 

ii and defile it, Ezek. vii., 22. from disapproving a system of 

robbery and plunder." — lb. , p. 
381. 
The holy places shall be de- " The holy places were pol- 
filed, luted with the monuments of 

idolatry." — Gib. Hist., vol. iv., 
p. 100. The Mosque of Omar 
now stands on the site of the 
Temple of Solomon. 
Ziori shall be plowed over " After the final destruction 
like afield, Jer. xxvi., 18. Mi- of the temple by the arms of 
cah hi., 12, Titus and Hadrian, a plough- 

share was drawn over the con- 
secrated ground as a sign of 
perpetual interdiction." — Gib- 
bon, ibid* " At the time when 
I visited this sacred spot 
(Mount Zion), one part of it 
supported a crop of barley, 
another was undergoing the 
labour of the plough." — Mic. 
hi., 12. Richardson 's Travels. 
I will bring the land into " So feeble a population in 
desolation ; and your enemies so excellent a country may 
which dwell therein shall be well excite our astonishment ; 
astonished Sit it, Levit. xxvi., 32. but this will be increased if 
Every one that passeth there- we compare the*present num- 
by shall be astonished, Jer. ber of inhabitants with that 
xviii., 6. of ancient times." — Volney's 

Trav., vol. ii., p. 366. 
Your highways shall be "Everywhere one might 
desolate, Levit. xxvi., 22. have seen cultivated fields, 

frequented roads, and crowded 
habitations. Ah! what are 
become of those ages of abun- 
dance and of life !" — Ruins, c. 
ii., p. 7. " In the interior parts 
of the country there are .nei- 
ther great roads, nor canals, 
nor even bridges, &c. The 
roads in the mountains are ex- 
tremely bad. It is remarkable 
that we never see a wagon nor 
a cart in all Syria." — Volney^s 
Travels, vol. it., 417, 419. 
O 



26 existing Proofs of the 

The wayfaring man ceas- " Nobody travels alone. Be- 
eth, Isa. xxxiii., 8. tween town and town there 

are neither posts nor public 
conveyances," &c. — lb., p. 
418. 

I will destroy your high pla- "The temples are thrown 
ces and bring your sanctuaries down, 
into desolation, Levit. xxvi., 
30, 31. Amos ii., 5. 

The palaces shall be forsa- " The palaces demolished, 
ken, Isa. xxxii., 14. 

I will destroy the remnant " The ports rilled up, 
of the seacoast, jE2re&. xxv., 16. 

I will make your cities " The towns destroyed, 
waste, Lev. xxvi., 31. 

Few men left, Isa. xxiv., 6. "And the earth, stripped oj 

inhabitants, 

I will make the land deso- "Seems a dreary burying- 
late ; yea, more desolate than place."* — Ruins, c. ii., p. 8. 
the wilderness towards Dib- 
lath, in all their habitations. 

Behold, the Lord maketh the " Syria has undergone revo- 
land empty, and maketh it lutions which have confounded 
waste, and turneth it upside the different races of the in- 
down; and scattereth abroad habitants." — Volney's Travels, 
the inhabitants thereof. And vol. i., p. 356. 
it shall be as with the people, 
so with the priest ; as with the 
servant, so with the master, 
&c, Isa. xxiv., 1. 

The earth Is denied under " The barbarism of Syria is 
the inhabitants thereof, lb. complete." — Ibid., vol. ii., p. 
The worst of the heathen shall 442. 
possess their houses, EzeJc. 
vii., 24. 

Because they have trans- " The pure Gospel of Christ, 
gressed the law, changed the everywhere the herald of civi- 
ordinances, broken the ever- lization and science, is almost 
lasting covenant, as little known in the Holy 

Land as in California or New- 
Holland."— Dr. Clarke's Trav- 
els, vol. ii., p. 405. 

Therefore hath the curse " God has, doubtless, pro- 
devoured the earth. nounced a secret malediction 

against the earth." — Volney's 
Ruins, c. ii., p. 11. 

* In this single sentence, without the addition or exception of a word, Vol- 
ney thus clearly and unconsciously shows the fulfilment of no less than six 
predictions. 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 21 

And they that dwell therein " I wandered over the coun- 
are desolate, Isa. xxiv., 5, 6. try and examined the condi- 
tion of the peasants, and no- 
where perceived aught but 
robbery and devastation, mis- 
ery and wretchedness." — 
Volney, ib., p. 2. 
The vine janguisheth,/6.,7. "In the mountains they do 

not prune the vines, and they 
nowhere ingraft trees." — Vol- 
nexfs Travels, vol. ii., p. 335. 
The new wine mourneth ; " Good cheer w T ould infalli- 
they shall not drink wine with bly expose them to extortion, 
a song, Isa. xxiv., 9. and wine to a corporeal pun- 

ishment." — Volney's Travels, 
vol. i., p. 480. 
Strong drink shall be bitter " The wines of Jerusalem are 
to them that drink it, Ib. most execrable." — Jolliffe's 

Letters from Palestine, vol. i., 

p. 184. " The wine drank in 

Jerusalem is probably the very 

worst to be met with in any 

country." — Wilson's Travels, 

p. 130. 

All the merry-hearted do "The Arabs (in singing) 

sigh. Their shouting shall may be said to excel most in 

be no shouting. the melancholy strain. To 

hear his plaintive tones, his 

sighs, and sobs, it is almost 

impossible to refrain from 

tears." — Volney's Travels, vol. 

ii., p. 440. 

The mirth of tabrets ceas- " They (the inhabitants) 

eth ; the joy of the harp ceas- have no music but vocal, for 

eth, Isa. xxiv., 8. they neither know nor esteem 

instrumental. Such instru- 
ments as they have, not ex- 
cepting their flutes, are de- 
testable." — Volney's Travels, 
p. 439. 
The noise ol them that re- "They have a serious, nay, 
joice endeth : all joy is dark- even sad and melancholy 
ened; the mirth of the land is countenance. They rarely 
gone, Isa. xxiv., 8,, 11. laugh; and the gayety of the 

French appears to them a fit 
of delirium." — Volney's Trav- 
els, vol. i., p. 476, 461. 
Many days and years shall " In Palestine you may see 



28 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE 

ye be troubled, ye careless married women almost un- 

women. Tremble, ye women covered." — lb., vol. i., p. 361. 

that are at ease ; be troubled, 

ye careless ones ; strip you 

and make you bare, and gird 

sackcloth upon your loins, Isa. 

xxxii., 10, 11. 

Upon the land of my people " The earth produces only 
shall come up thorns and bri- briers and wormwood." — Vol- 
ers, lb., 13. ney's Rains, p. 9. 

The forts and towers shall " At every step we meet 
be for dens for ever, lb. v., 14. with ruins of towers, dungeons 

and castles with fosses, fre- 
quently inhabited by jackalls, 
owls, and scorpions." — Vol- 
ney^s Travels, vol. ii., p. 336. 
A pasture of flocks : there "All the parts of Galilee 
shall the lambs feed after their which afford pasture are oc- 
manner : and the waste pla- cupied by Arab tribes, around 
ces of the fat ones shall stran- whose brown tents the sheep 
gers eat, lb. and lambs gambol to the sound 

of the reed, which at night- 
fall calls themhome." — Malte- 
Bran, vol. ii., p. 148. 
The multitude of the city "There are innumerable! 
shall be left, lb. The de- /monuments which depose in 
fenced city shall be left deso- favour of the great population 
late, and the habitation fors a- of high antiquity, such as the 
ken, and left like a wilderness, prodigious quantity of ruins 
Isa. xxvii., 10. dispersed over the plains, and 

even in the mountains, at this 
day deserted.'''' — Volney's Trav- 
els, vol. ii., p. 368. 
When the boughs thereof " The olive-trees (near Ari- 
are withered, they shall be mathea) are daily perishing 
broken off; the women come through age, the ravages of 
and set them on fire, Isa. contending factions, and even 
xxvii., 10. from secret mischief. The 

Mamelukes having cut down 
all the olive-trees, for the 
pleasure they take in destroy- 
ing, or to make fires, Yafa has 
lost its greatest commerce."— 
Volney's Travels, vol. ii., p. 
332, 333. 
For it is a people of no un- " The most simple arts are 
derstanding, Isa. xxvii., 11. in a state of barbarism; the 

sciences are totally unknown." 
— lb. 9 p. 442. 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 29 

Your cities burned with "A place lately ravaged 
fire, Isa. i., 7. with fire and sword would 

have precisely the appearance 

of this village (Loudd, Lydda). 

Ramla is in almost as ruinous 

a state."— lb., p. 332, 333. 

Many pastors have destroy- " Like the Turkmen, the 

ed my vineyard, they have Curds are pastors and wander- 

trodden my portion under ers. A third wandering peo- 

foot, Jer. xii., 10. pie in Syria are the Bedouin 

Arabs. The Turkmen, the 
Curds, and the Bedouins have 
no fixed habitations, but. keep 
perpetually wandering, with 
their tents and herds." Chap, 
xxiii. of Volney's Travels is 
entitled, Of the Pastoral or 
Wandering Tribes of Syria.— 
Vol. i., p. 367, &c. 
They have made my pleas- " With its numerous advan- 
ant portion a desolate wilder- tages of climate and soil, it 
ness, the whole land is made is not astonishing that Syria 
desolate, lb., 10, 11. should always have beeii es- 

teemed a most delicious coun- 
try." — Volney's Travels, vol. i., 
p. 321. "I have seen nothing 
but solitude and desertion." — 
Volney's Ruins, p. 7. 
The spoilers are come upon / " These precautions (against 
►all high places through the robbers) are above all neces- 
wilderness, Jer. xii., 12. sary in the countries exposed 

to the Arabs, such as Pales- 
tine, and the whole frontier of 
the desert." — Volney's Trav- 
els, vol. ii , p. 417. 
No flesh shall have peace. " War, famine, and pesti- 
lence assail them at every 
turn." — Volney^s Ruins, p. 9. 
They have sown wheat, but " Man sows in anguish, and 
they shall reap thorns; they reaps vexation and care." — 
have put themselves to pain, lb., 11. "They would not be 
but shall not profit. permitted to reap the fruit 

of their labours."— Volney's 
Travels, vol. ii., p. 435. 
They shall be ashamed of " The annual sum paid by 
your revenues, Jer. xii., 13. Syria into the treasury of the 

Sultan amounts to 2345 pur- 
ses. 
C2 



30 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE 

For Aleppo . . . 800 
Tripoli ... 750 
Damascus . 45 

Acre 750 

Palestine . 

2345 purses." 

(Or £112,135.) — Volney's 

Travels, vol. ii., p. 360. 

Thus saith the Lord God of "The peasants are every - 

the inhabitants of Jerusalem, where reduced to a little cake 

and of the land of Israel, they of barley or dourra, to onions, 

shall eat their bread with care- lentils, and water" "Dread 

fulness, and drink their ivater prevails through the villages." 

with astonishment; that her "The arbitrary power of the 

land may be desolate from Sultan, transmitted to the 

all that is therein, because pacha and to all his sub-dele- 

of the violence of all them that gates, by giving a free course 

dwell therein, Ezek. xii., 19. to extortion, becomes the 

mainspring of a tyranny which 
circulates through every class, 
while its effects, by a recipro- 
cal reaction, are everywlbere 
fatal to agriculture, the arts, 
commerce, population ; in a 
word, everything which con- 
stitutes the power of the 
state." — Volney's Travels, vol. 
ii., p. 378, 379, 412,477. 
Ye shall be as a garden that " The remains of cisterns 
hath no water, Isa. i., 30. How are to be found (throughout 
long shall the land mourn, and Judea) in which they collected 
the herbs of every field wither, the rain water; and traces of 
for the wickedness of them that the canals by which these 
dwell therein 1 Jer. xii., 4. waters were distributed on 

the fields." — Malte-Brun's Ge- 
ography, vol. ii., p. 150, 151. 
" We here see none of that gay 
carpeting of grass and flowers 
which decorate the meadows 
of Normandy and Flanders. 
The land of Syria has almost 
always a dusty appearance. 
Had not these countries been 
ravaged by the hands of man, 
they might perhaps at this day 
have been shaded by forests," 
— Volney's Travels, vol. ii., p. 
359. 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 31 

And the cities that are in- " Every day I found in my 
habited shall be laid waste, route villages deserted and cit- 
and they shall know that I am ies in ruins." — Volneifs Ruins, 
the Lord, Ezek. xii., 20. c. i. 

When thus it shall be in the "1 looked for the ancient 
midst of the land among the people and their works : and 
people, there shall be as the all that I could find was a, faint 
shaking of an olive-tree, and trace, like to what the foot of 
as the gleaning of the grapes the passenger leaves on the 
when the vintage is done, lb., sand." — Volney's Ruins, c. ii. 
13. The glory of Jacob shall 
be made thin, Isa. xvii., 4. 

But yet in it shall be a tenth ; " The land of the plains is 
and it shall return and shall be fat and loamy, and exhibits 
eaten, as a teil-tree, and as an every sign of the greatest fe- 
oak, whose substanceis in them, cundity. Were nature assist- 
when they cast their leaves, ed by art, the productions of 
Isa. vi., 13. the most distant countries 

might be produced within the 
distance of twenty leagues." 
— Volney's Travels, vol. i., p. 
308, 317. " Galilee would be 
a paradise were it inhabited 
by an industrious people, un- 
der an enlightened govern- 
ment."— Malte-Brurfs Geogra- 
phy, vol. ii., p. 148. 
The city that went out by a "A tract from which a hun- 
thousand shall leave a hun- dred individuals draw a scan- 
dred, Amos v., 3. ty subsistence formerly main- 

tained thousands" — Pierre Be- 
lo, quoted by Malte-Brun. 

I will make Samaria as a " This great city is wholly 
heap of the field, and as plant- converted into gardens."— 
ings of a vineyard. MaundrelVs Travels, p. 78. 

And I will pour down the u The relative distance, lo- 
stones thereof into the val- cal position, and unaltered 
ley, and I will discover the name of Sebaste, leave no 
foundations thereof, Micah i., doubt as to the identity of its 
6. site ; and its local features are 

equally seen in the threat of 
Micah." — Buckingham's Trav- 
els in Palestine, p. 511, 512. 

O Canaan, the land of the " In the plain between Ram- 
Philistines, I will even de- la and Gaza" (the plain of 
stroy you : The seacoast shall the Philistines, along the sea- 
be dwellings and cottages for coast), " the houses are so 
shepherds, and folds for flocks, many huts, sometimes de- 
Zeph. ii., 5, 6. tached, at others ranged in the 



32 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE 

form of cells around a court- 
yard, enclosed by a mud wall. 
In winter they and their cattle 
may be said to live together, 
the part of the dwelling allotted 
for themselves being only 
raised two feet above that in 
which they lodge their beasts." 
— Volnofs Travels , vol. ii., p. 
335. 
The remnant of the Philis- u All the rest is a desert." 
tines shall perish, Amos i., 8. — Ibid., p. 336. 

I will send a fire upon the "The ruins of white marble 
wall of Gaza, which shall de- sometimes found at Gaza 
vour the palaces thereof, lb. 7. prove that it was formerly the 

abode of luxury and opu- 
lence." — Volney^s Travels, vol. 
ii., p. 340. 
The king shall perish from "It is no more than a de- 
Gaza, Zech. ix., 5. Baldness fenceless village."-— Ibid., p. 
is come upon Gaza, Jer. xlvii., 340. 
5. 

Askelon shall be a desola- " The deserted ruins of Az~ 
tion, Zeph. ii., 4. Askelon kalan." — Ibid., p. 338. 
shall not be inhabited, Zech. 
ix., 5. 

I will cut off the inhabitants " We met successively with 
from Ashdod, Amos i., 8. various ruins, the most con- 

siderable of which are at Ez- 
doud, famous at present for its 
scorpions." — Ibid. 
Lebanon is ashamed and " Among the crags of the 
hewn down, Isa. xxxiii., 9. rocks (on Lebanon) may be 
The forest of the vintage is seen the no very magnificent 
come down, Zech. xi., 2. The remains of the boasted ce- 
high ones of stature shall be dars." — Ibid., vol. i.,p. 292. 
hewn down, &c, Isa. x., 33. 

The rest of the trees of his " There are but four or five 
forest shall be few : that a of these trees which deserve 
child may write them, Isa. x., any notice." — Volney's Trav- 
is, els, i., 292. 

Ammon. I will stretch out " All this country, formerly 
my hand upon thee. I will so populous and flourishing, is 
destroy thee, Ezek. xxv., 7. now changed into a vast des- 
ert."— Seetzen's Trav., p. 34. 
I will deliver thee for a spoil " The far greater part of the 
to the heathen. Ibid. country is uninhabited, being 

abandoned to the wandering 
Arabs."— Ibid., p. 37. 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 33 

I will make Kabbah (the "We met numbers of Arabs 
chief city) of the Ammonites with their camels.*' — Ibid. 
a stable for camels, 

And a couching place for "The keepers drive in goats 
flocks, Ezek. xxv. 5. for shelter during the night." 

Mr. Buckingham relates, that 
at Amman he " lay down 
among flocks of sheep and 
goats, and that he was almost 
entirely prevented from sleep- 
ing by the bleating of flocks" — 
Travels among the Arab Tribes, 
p. 72, 73. 
Rabbah shall be a desolate " The buildings exposed to 
heap, Jer. xlix., 2. the atmosphere are all in de- 

cay. The plain is covered 
with the remains of private 
buildings," &c. — Burckhardfs 
Travels in Syria, p. 359, 360. 
Moab. The spoiler shall " The ruins ofEleale, Hesh- 
come upon every city, and no bon, Meon, Dibon. Aroer, still 
city shall escape. The cities subsist to illustrate the history 
thereof shall be desolate, with- of the Beni Israel." Burck- 
out any to dwell therein, hardt enumerates many ruined 
Judgment is come upon all the sites within its boundaries. — 
cities of the land of Moab, far Travels in Nubia, p. 38. Trav- 
and near, Jer. xlviii., 8, 9. els in Syria, p. 3T0. 

The days come, saith the Of Moab, Burckhardt writes 
Lord, that I will send unto — " Wherever the Bedouins 
Moab wanderers, that shall (wandering Arabs) are masters 
cause him to wander, Ibid., 12. of the cultivators, the latter 

are soon reduced to beggary 
by their unceasing demands." 
— Travels in Syria, p. 381. 
ye that dwell in Moab, "The wretched peasants re- 
leave the cities, and dwell in tire among the rocks which 
the rock, and be like the dove, border on the Dead Sea." — 
that maketh her nest in the Volney's Trcvels.xol. ii..ip. 334. 
sides of the hole's mouth, Jer. " There are many families liv- 
xlviii., 28. ing in caverns" — " inhabitants 

of the rocks." — Seeizerfs 
Travels, p. 26. "There are 
many artificial caves in a large 
range of perpendicular cliffs, 
in some of which are cham- 
bers and small sleeping apart- 
ments." — Captains Irby and 
Mangles* Travels, p. 473. 
Moab shall be a derision. " In the Valley of Wale," bor- 



34 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE 

As the wandering bird cast out dering on the Arnon, Burck- 
of her nest, so the daughters hardt observed " a large party 
of Moab shall be at the ford of of Arabs Shererat encamped. 
Arnon, Isa. xvi., 2. They wander about in misery, 

the women wearing nothing 
but a loose shirt hanging in 
rags about them." — Travels , p. 
370, 371. 

Edom (or Idumea) shall be " The traces of many towns 
a desolation. I will make thee and villages are met with. At 
most desolate, Jer. xlix., 17. present all this country is a 
Ezek. xxxv., 3. desert, 

I will stretch out my hand " And Maan (Teman, as 
upon Edom ; and will make it marked in the map prefixed to 
desolate from Teman, Ezek. Burckhardt's Travels) is the 
xxv., 13. only inhabited place in it." — P. 

436. 
If grape-gatherers come to " The whole plain presented 
thee, woulfl they not leave to the view an expanse of 
some gleaning grapes 1 if shifting sands ; the depth of 
thieves by night, they will sand precludes all vegetation 
destroy till they have enough, of herbage." — Burckhardf s 
But I have made Esau bare, Travels in Syria, p. 442. 
Edom shall be a desert wil- 
derness, Jer. xlix., 9, 10. 

I will stretch out upon Idu- " On ascending the western 
mea (Edom) the line of con- plain, we had before us an im- 
fusion and the stones of em-pti- mense expanse of dreary 
ness. country, entirely covered with 

black flints, with here and 
there some hilly chain rising 
from the plain." — Burckhardt's 
Syria, p. 444. 
Moreover, the word of the " It is from the summit of 
Lord came unto me, saying, (the mountain) El Nakb that 
son of man, set thy face against one can judge of the general 
Edom, and prophecy against aspect of the country, of the 
it, and say unto it, Thus saith melancholy and dismal state of 
the Lord God, behold, Mount which it is difficult to convey 
Seir, I am against thee, and I an idea with the pencil alone, 
will stretch out mine hand Many prophets have announ- 
against thee, and I will make ced the misery of Idumea, but 
thee most desolate, &c.,Ezek. the strong language of Eze- 
xxxv., 1,2,3. kiel can alone adequately de- 

scribe this gfeat desolation." 
■ — Labor de. 
I will lay thy cities waste ; " The following ruined pla- 
and thou shalt be desolate, O cesare situated inDjebal She- 
Mount Seir, Ezek. xxxv., 3, 4. ra (Mount Seir), Kalaab, Djir- 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 35 

ba, Eyl, Ferdakh, Anyk, Bir- 
el-Beytar, Shemakh, and Syk." 
—Ibid., p. 443, 444. 
I will make thee perpetu- " Of the tOAvns laid down in 
al desolations, and thy cities D'Anville's map, Thoana ex- 
shall not return, Ezek.xxx v., 9. cepted, no traces remain." 

—Ibid. 
I will make thee small "The ruins of the city (of 
among the heathen : thy ter- Petra, or the Rock, the capital 
ribleness hath deceived thee, of Edom) burst on the view in 
and the pride of thine heart, their full grandeur, shut in on 
O thou that dwellest in the the opposite side by barren 
clefts of the rock, that holdest craggy precipices, from which 
the height of the hill ; though numerous ravines and valleys 
thou shouldst make thy nest branch out in all directions ; 
as high as the eagle, I will- the sides of the mountains 
bring thee down from thence, covered with an endless vari- 
saith the Lord. Also Edom ety of excavated tombs and 
shall be a desolation, Jer. xlix., private dwellings, presented 
15, 16, 17. altogether the most singular 

scene we ever beheld." — Irby 

and Mangles" Travels, p. 422. 

" The rocks are hollowed out 

into innumerable chambers of 

different dimensions," &c. — 

MackmichaeV s Journey, p. 228. 

" Some of them are so high, 

and the side of the mountain 

is so perpendicular, that it 

seems impossible to approach 

the uppermost," &c. — Burck- 

hardt's Travels, p. 422. 

I will make thee perpetual " I would that the skeptic 

desolations, and thy cities shall could stand as I did among 

not return, and ye shall know the ruins of this city among 

that I am the Lord, Ezek. the rocks, and there open the 

xxxv., 9. sacred book and read the 

Every one that goeth by it words of the inspired penman, 

shall be astonished, Jer. xlix., written w r hen this desolate 

17. place was one of the greatest 

cities in the world. I see the 
scoff arrested, his cheek pale, 
his lip quivering, and his heart 
quaking with fear, as the ru- 
ined city cries out to him in a 
voice loud and powerful as 
that of one risen from the 
dead ; though he would not 
believe Moses and the proph- 



36 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE 

ets, he believes the handwri- 
ting of God himself, in the des- 
olation and eternal ruin around 
him." — Stephens's Incidents of 
Travel in Arabia Petrcea, <5fc. 
Vol. ii., p. 58. 
They shall be called the bor- The Arabs in Edom are call- 
der of wickedness, Malachi ed " a most savage and treach- 
i., 4. erous race." — Irby and Man- 

gles. " They have the repu- 
tation" says Burckhardt, "of 
being very daring thieves." 
And Pococke describes them 
as " a very bad people, and 
notorious "robbers." — Vol. i., 
p. 136. 
They shall call the nobles " There is not a single hu- 
thereof to the kingdom, but man being living near it." — 
none shall be there ; and ail Irby and Mangles' Travels, p. 
her princes shall be nothing, 439. The sepulchres are nu- 
Isa. xxxiv., 12. merous and magnificent ; and 

" great," says Burckhardt, 
" must have been the opulence 
of a city which could dedicate 
such a monument to the mem- 
ory of its rulers." — P. 425. 
Thorns shall come up in her " Most of the plants at Pe- 
palaces, nettles and brambles tra are thorny." — Irby and 
in the fortresses thereof, Isa. Mangles' Trav.,^. 4?>5. "The 
xxxiv., 13. thorns," as described by La- 

borde, " rise to the same height 
with the columns ; creeping 
and prickly plants hide the re- 
mains of the works of man : 
the thorn or bramble reaches 
the top of the monuments, 
grows on the cornices, and con- 
ceals thebase of the columns." 
Shall I not destroy the wise Even the clearing away of 
men out of Edom, and under- rubbish merely " to allow the 
standing out of the Mount of water to flow" into an ancient 
Esau] Obad., ver. 8. cistern, in order to render it. 

useful to themselves, is spo- 
ken of by Burckhardt " as art 
undertaking far beyond the 
views of the wandering Ar- 
abs." — Burckhardt' s Travels,. 
p. 366. 
The cormorant (Hebrew, "ThebirdKattaismetwith 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 37 

Kath) shall possess it, Isa. in immense numbers ; they 

xxxiv., 11. fly in such large flocks, that 

the Arab boys often kill two 
or three of them at a time, 
merely by throwing a stick 
among them," — BurckhardCs 
Trav., p. 406. 
The owl shall dwell in it, " Eagles, hawks, and owls 

Ibid. were soaring in considerable 

numbers above our heads, 
seemingly annoyed at any 
one approaching their lonely 
habitation" — Irby and Man- 
gles' Trav., p. 415. 
And the raven (or crow) " The fields of Tafyle," in 

shall dwell in it, Ibid. the immediate vicinity of 

Edom, " are frequented by an 

immense number of crows." 

— BurckhardCs Travels, p. 405. 

" It shall be a habitation of " The Arabs in general 

dragons, Ibid*, 13. avoid them (the ruins in 

Edom) on account of the 
enormous scorpions with 
which they swarm." — Vol- 
ney's Travels, vol. ii., p. 344. 
The satyr (or goat) shall " Large herds of mountain 

cry to his fellow, Ibid., 14. goats are met with." — Burch- 

hardt, p. 405. 
Nineveh. He will make an The mounds " show neither 

utter end of the place thereof, bricks, stones, nor other ma- 

I will make thy grave; for terials of building; but are 

thou art vile, Nahum i.,8, 14. in many places overgrown 

with grass." — Buckingham's 
Travels in Mesopotamia, vol. 
ii., p. 49, &c. 
She is empty, void, and " Eastward of the Tigris, at 

waste, Ibid, ii., 10. the end of the bridge of Mo- 

sul, the great Nineveh had 
formerly been erected : the 
city, and even the ruins, had 
long since disappeared ; the 
vacant space afforded a spa- 
cious field for the operation 
of the two armies." — Gibbon's 
Hist., vol. viii., p. 250, 251. 
Thy crowned are as locusts, " Where are those ramparts 

and thy captains as the great of Nineveh 2" — Volneyh Ru- 

grasshoppers which flee away, ins, c. ii. 

and the place is not known 

D 



38 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE 

where they were, Nahum iii., 
17. 

The Lord hath given a com- "The name of Nineveh 
mandment concerning thee, seems to be threatened with 
that no more of thy name be the same oblivion that has 
sown, Ibid, i., 14. overtaken its greatness." — 

Ibid., c. iv. 

Tyre. Tyre shall be a " Instead of that ancient 

place for the spreading of commerce, so active and so 

nets in the midst of the sea, extensive, Sour (Tyre) is re- 

Ezelc.xxvi., 5. duced to a miserable village. 

They live obscurely on the 

produce of their little ground 

and a trifling fishery." — Vol- 

ney's Travels, vol. ii., p. 212, 

225. 

Egypt. I will lay the land " Deprived twenty-three 

waste and all that is therein, centuries ago of her natural 

by the hand of strangers, Ibid, proprietors, she has seen her 

xxx., 12. fertile fields successively a 

prey to the Persians, the 

Macedonians, the Romans, 

the Greeks, the Arabs, the 

Georgians, and, at length, the 

race of Tartars distinguished 

by the name of Ottoman 

Turks." — Ibid., vol. i., p. 74, 

103. 

It shall be a base kingdom, " Egypt above five hundred 

the basest of kingdoms, Ibid, years has been under the ar- 

xxix., 15. bitrary dominion of strangers 

and slaves." — Gibbon's Hist., 






vol. vi., p. 109. 



The Arabs. I will make They are '"'armed against 
him (Ishmael) a great nation, mankind." "A single rob- 
His hand shall be against ber or a few associates are 
every man, and every man's branded with their genuine 
hand shall be against him, name ; but the exploits of a 
Gen. xvi., 12. numerous band (of Arabs) as- 

sume the character of a law- 
ful and honourable war." — 
Ibid., vol. ix.,p. 237. 

CHALDEA, OR BABYLONIA. 

Chaldea. I will punish the "These splendid accounts 

land of the Chaldeans, Jer. of the Babylonian lands yield- 

xxv., 12. I will send unto ing crops of grain two or 

Babylon fanners, that shall three hundred fold, compared 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS, 39 

fan her, and empty her land, with the modern face of the 
&c, Jer. li., 2. country, afford a remarkable 

proof of the singular desola- 
tion to which it has been sub- 
jected." — Transactions of the 
Literary Society, Bombay, vol. 
i., p. 123. It is an "immeas- 
urable wild, bounded only by 
thedesest," "a barren waste," 
" a bare desert," " a barren 
country," &c. — Capt. Mignarfs 
Travels,^. 31 ; Major KeppeVs 
Narrative, vol. i., p. 260; 
Buckingham's Travels in Meso- 
potamia, vol. ii., p. 242, &c. 
A drought is upon her wa- " The canals at present can 
ters, and they shall be dried only be traced by their de- 
up, Jer. 1., 38. Behold the hin- cayed banks." — Bombay Lit. 
dermost of the nations, a wil- Trans., p. 138. "They are 
derness, a dry land, and a now dry -and neglected."— 
desert, Jer. 1., 12; li.,43. Rich's Memoirs, p. 4. "The 

absence of all cultivation, the 
steril, arid, and wild charac- 
ter of the scene, formed a 
contrast to the rich and de- 
lightful accounts delineated in 
Scripture." — Mignan's Trav- 
els, p. 5. 
Her cities are a desolation, The ancient cities of Chal- 
Ibid. dea" no longer exist." — Major 

RennelPs Geography of Herodo- 
tus, p. 335. The more mod- 
ern cities, which flourished 
under the empire of the ca- 
lifs, " are all in ruins." — Mig- 
nan's Travels, App. " The 
whole country is strewed over 
with the debris of Grecian, 
Roman, and Arabian towns, 
confounded in the same mass 
of rubbish." — Malte-Brun's 
Geography, vol. ii., p. 119. 
Babylon* shall become Babylon has become "a 
heaps, Jer. Ii., 31. Is. xiii., vast succession of mounds," 
xiv. Jer. 1., li. "a great mass of ruined 

* The prophetic history of the decline and fall^of Babylon, from its first 
capture to its present desolation, is so copious as to occupy ninety pages 
of the Evidence of Prophecy, in illustration of as many predictions. 



40 



EXISTING PROOFS OF THE 



Cast her up as heaps, Jer. 
I., 26. 



And destroy her utterly. 
Ibid. 



Let nothing of her be left, 
Ibid. 



I will make it pools of water, 
Is. xiv., 23. 



Sit on the dust, sit on the 
ground, O daughter of the 
Chaldeans, Is. xlvii., 1. 

Thy nakedness shall be un- 
covered, Is. xlvii., £, 



heaps," " uneven heaps of 
various sizes. The larger ru- 
ins have the appearance of 
irregular and misshapen hills, 
the lesser form a succession 
of little hillocks." — Keppel, 
Porter, Rich, Mignan, Buck- 
ingham, &c. 

" In seeking for bricks, the 
workmen pierce into the 
mound in every direction, hol- 
lowing out deep ravines and 
pits, and throwing up the rub- 
bish in heaps on the surface." 
— Rich's Memoir, p. 22. 

" From the excavations in 
every possible shape and di- 
rection, the regular lines of 
the original ruins have been 
so broken that nothing but 
confusion is seen to exist." — 
Sir R. K. Porter's Travels, vol. 
ii., p. 338. 

" Vast heaps constitute all 
that now remains of ancient 
Babylon." — KeppeVs Narra- 
tive, vol. i., p. 196. Some of 
the heaps are " completely 
exhausted of all building ma- 
terials ; and nothing is now 
left but heaps of earth and 
fragments of brick." — Mig- 
nan's Travels, p. 199, 200. 
Porter's Travels, 356, 338, &c. 

" The ground is sometimes 
covered with pools of water in 
the hollows." " The plain is 
covered at intervals with small 
pools of water." — Bucking- 
ham's Travels in Mesopotamia, 
vol. ii., p. 296. Porter, Kep- 
pel, &c. 

" The whole face of the coun- 
try is covered with vestiges of 
buildings." — Rich, p. 2. 

" I am perfectly incapable of 
conveying an adequate idea," 
says Captain Mignan, " of the 
dreary, lonely nakedness that 
appeared before me." — P. 116. 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS, 41 

Sit thou silent, and get thee " A silent and sublime soli- 
into darkness, Is. xlvii., 5. tude, a silence profound as 

the grave." — Porter's Travels, 

vol. ii., p. 294, 407. 

Because of the wrath of the Babylon, " the tenantless and 

Lord it shall not be inhabited, desolate metropolis." — Mig- 

but it shall be wholly desolate, nan's Travels, p. 234. " The 

Jer. 1., 13. eye wandered over a barren 

desert, in which the ruins were 
nearly the only indication that 
it had been inhabited." — Kep- 
peVs Narrative, p. 196. 
It shall never be inhabited, — " Ruins, composed like 
Ibid, xii., 20. Jer. 1., 40, &c. those of Babylon, of heaps of 

rubbish impregnated with ni- 
tre, cannot be cultivated."— 
Rich's Memoirs, p. 16. " The 
decomposing materials of a 
Babylonian structure doom 
the earth on which they perish 
to a lasting sterility." — Sir R. 
K. Porter's Travels, vol. ii., p. 
391. 
Nor dwelt in from genera- In the sixteenth century 
Hon to generation, Is. xiii., 20. " there was not a house to be 

seen" at Babylon. — Ray's Col- 
lection of Travels, Rawolff, p, 
174. In the nineteenth it is 
still " desolate and tenantless." 
— Mignan, p. 234. 
Neither shall the Arabian " I saw the sun sink behind 
pitch tent there, Ibid. the Mujelibah," says Captain 

Mignan, " and obeyed with in- 
finite regret the summons of 
my guides," Arabs completely 
armed. He " could not per- 
suade them to remain longer, 
from the apprehension of evil 
spirits. It is impossible to 
eradicate this idea from the 
minds of these people." — 
Travels, p. 2, 168, 201, 235. 
Buckingham, &c. 
Neither shall the shepherds " All the people of the country 
make their folds there, Is. xiii., assert that it is extremely dan- 
21. gerous to approach this mound 

after nightfall on account of 
the multitude of evil spirits by 
which it is haunted." — Rich, 
P3 



42 



EXISTING PROOFS OF THE 



But wild beasts of the desert 
shall lie there. 



And their houses shall be 
full of doleful creatures. 



And owls shall dwell there, 



And satyrs (goats) shall 
dance there, 



And wild beasts of the isl- 
ands shall cry in their deso- 
late houses (or palaces), 



And dragons in their pleas- 
ant palaces, Isa. xiii., 21, 22. 



Cut off the sower from Bab- 
ylon, and him that handleth 
the sickle in the time of har- 
vest, Jer. 1., 16. 



p. 27. " By this superstitious 
belief they are prevented from 
pitching a tent by night, or 
making a fold." 

"There are dens of wild 
beasts in various parts." — 
Rich's Memoir, p. 30. Porter, 
Keppel, Buckingham, &c. 

These dens or caverns " are 
the retreat of jackalls, hyenas, 
and other noxious animals." 
" The ' strong ordure' or 
'loathsome smell' which is- 
sues from most of them is 
sufficient warning not to pro- 
ceed into the den." — Keppel' s 
Narrative, "p. 179,180: Porter's 
Travels, vol. ii., p. 342, &c. 

" In most of the cavities are 
numbers of bats and owls." 
" Thousands of bats and owls 
have filled many of these cavi- 
ties." — Rich's Memoir, p. 30. 
Mignan's Travels, p. 167. 

" The caves" and *' their en- 
trances are strewed with 
bones of sheep and goats." — 
Mignan,\>. 167. Porter's Trav- 
els, vol. ii., p. 342. 

"We had no doubt," says 
Major Keppel, " as to the sav- 
age nature of the inhabitants. 
Wild beasts are numerous at 
the Mujilibie," one of the lar- 
gest of the heaps, supposed to 
have been the palace. 

" Venomous reptiles are very 
numerous throughout the ru- 
ins." — Mignaris Travels, p. 
168. 

" On this part of the plain, 
both where traces of buildings 
were left and where none had 
stood, all seemed equally 
naked of vegetation." — Por- 
ter's Travels, vol. ii., p. 392. 
" The eye wandered over a 
barren desert, in which the 
ruins were nearly the only in- 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 



43 



The sea is come upon Bab- 
ylon ; she is covered with the 
multitude of the waves there- 
of, Jer. li.,42. 

Neither doth any son of 
man pass thereby, Isa. li., 43. 



A desolation, a dry land, and 
a wilderness, Jer. li., 43. 



It shall be wholly desolate, 
Jer. 1., 13. 



Bel (the temple of Belus) 
boweth down, Isa. xlvi., 1. 



Bel is confounded, Jer. 1., 2. 



I will make thee a burnt 
mountain, Jer. li., 25. 



dication that it had ever been 
inhabited." — KeppeVs Narra- 
tive, p. 196." 

" For the space of two 
months throughout the year, 
the ruins of Babylon are in- 
undated by the annual over- 
flowing of the Euphrates, 

So as to render many parts 
of them inaccessible by con- 
verting the valleys into mo- 
rasses.'" — Rich's Memoir, p. 13. 
Sir R. K. Porter, Buckingham, 
&c 

After the subsiding of the 
waters, even the low heaps 
become again " sun-burned 
ruins," and the site of Babylon, 
like that of the other cities of 
Chaldea, is " a dry waste," 
" a parched and burning plain." 
— Buckingham } s Travels, vol. 
ii., p. 302, 305. KeppeVs Nar- 
rative, i.,p. 196. 

" A more complete picture of 
desolation could not well be 
imagined." — KeppeVs Narra 
tive, p. 196. Sir R. K. Por 
ter's Travels, vol. ii., p. 392. 

The loftiest temple ever 
built is nothing now but the 
highest heap in Babylon, bow- 
ed down to little more than 
the third part of its. original 
height. " The whole mound 
is a ruin." — Rich's Memoir, p. 
37. 

" The whole summit and 
sides of this mountainous ruin 
are furrowed by the weather 
and by human violence into 
deep hollows and channels." 
— Mignatfs Trav.,ip. 210. Por- 
ter, Rich, &c. 

" The Birs Nimrood pre- 
sents the appearance of a cir- 
cular hill." — Rich's Memoir, 
p. 35. " It is strewed over 
with petrified and vitrified sub- 



44: EXISTING PROOFS OF THE 

stances." — Mignatfs Travels, 
p. 10. " On the summit are 
immense fragments of brick- 
work, of no determinate fig- 
ure, tumbled together" (con- 
founded), " and converted into 
solid vitrified masses." — Rich's 
Memoirs, p. 36. " The change 
exhibited on which is only- 
accountable from their hav- 
ing been exposed to the fier- 
cest fire, or rather scathed by 
lightning." — Mignan's Trav- 
els, p. 208. They are " com- 
pletely molten," and " ring 
like glass." — Keppel, p. 194. 
Sir R. K. Porter's Travels, 
vol. ii., p. 308, 326. 
I will stretch out my hand " Throughout the whole of 
against thee, and roll thee these awful testimonies of the 
down from the rocks, Jer. Ii., fire (whatever fire it was !), 
25. which doubtless hurled them 

from their original elevation, 

the regular lines of cement 

are visible." — Sir R. K. Tor- 

ter's Travels, vol. ii., p. 312. 

They shall not take of thee " The vitrified masses" are 

a stone for a corner, nor a unfit for either use; and the 

stone for foundations, but bricks in other parts of the 

thou shalt be desolate for ruinous heap, " cannot be de- 

ever, Jer. Ii., 26. tached whole." It cannot, 

therefore, be rebuilt. — Mig* 
nan's Travels, p. 206. Porter, 
Rich, Buckingham, &c. 
Merodach (the palace) is " The Mujelibie is a mass 
broken in pieces, Jer. 1., 2. of confusion, none of its mem- 
bers being distinguishable." — 
Buckingham's Travels, vol. ii., 
p. 273. " On the southeast 
it is cloven into a deep furrow 
from top to bottom." — Mig- 
nan, p. 166. 
Thou shalt be brought down "The sides of the ruin ex- 
to the sides of the pit, lsa. hibit hollows worn partly by 
xiv., 15. the weather," &e. " All the 

sides are worn into furrows." 
— Mignan's Travels, p. 167. 
Rich's Memoirs, p 29. 
Thy pomp is brought dowii " This very pile was once 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 45 

to the grave, and the noise of the seat of luxury and vice ; 

thy viols, Isa. xiv., 11. now abandoned to decay," <fcc. 

— Mignarts Travels, p. 172. 
The worm is spread under " The base is greatly injured 

thee ; and the worms cover by time and the elements.' 1 

thee, Isa. xiv., 11. — Ibid., p. 166. " The summit 

is covered with heaps of rub- 
bish." — Rich's Memoir, p. 29. 
" The mound was full of large 
holes, strewed with the car- 
casses and skeletons of ani- 
mals recently killed." — Kep- 
peVs Narrative, p. 179. In the 
warm climate of Chaldea, 
wherever these are strewed, 
worms cannot be wanting. 
Thou art cast out of thy " Several deep excavations 

grave like an abominable have been made in different 

branch, Isa. xiv., 19. places."— Sir R. K Porter's 

Travels, vol. ii., 342. After 
being brought down to the 
grave, it is cast out of it again, 
for " many of the excavations 
have been dug by the rapacity 
of the Turks, tearing up its 
bowels in search of hidden 
treasures." — Ibid. 
And as the raiment of them Several of the large holes, 

that are slain, thrust through whereof it is full, " penetrate 

with a sword, very far into the body of 

the structure." — Ibid., p. 342. 

KeppeVs Narrative, p. 179. 

Mignan's Travels, p. 171, &c. 

That go down to the stones On the supposed site of the 

of the pit ; hanging gardens of Babylon, 

near to the palace, there are 
now disclosed to view " two 
subterranean passages, cover- 
ed over with large masses of 
stone. This is nearly the 
only place where stone is ob- 
servable." — KeppeVs Narra- 
tive, vol. i., p. 205. 
As a carcass trodden under " The Mujelibie rises in a 

feet, Isa. xiv., 19. steep ascent, over which the 

passengers can only go up by 
the winding paths worn by 
frequent visits to the ruined 
edifice." — Buckingham's Trav- 



46 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE 

els, p. 258. From the least to 
the greatest of the heaps, they 
are all trodden on. " The ru- 
ins of Babylon are trodden 
under foot of men." — Volney's 
Ruins, c. iv. 
Her idols are confounded, " Engraved marbles, idols 
her images are broken in of clay," " small figures of 
pieces; all the graven images brass and copper," "bronze 
of her gods he hath broken figures of men and animals 
unto the ground, Jer. 1., 2. are found among the ruins." 

— RennelVs Geography of He- 
rodotus, p. 368. Rich, Porter, 
Mignan. 
The broad walls of Baby- " Where are the walls of 
Ion shall be utterly broken, Babylon V* asks Volney, Ru- 
Jer. li., 58, ins, c. ii. " In common with 

other travellers," says Major 
Keppel, " we totally failed in 
discovering any trace of the 
city walls." — KeppeVs Narra- 
tive, vol. i., p. 175. Bombay 
Literary Transactions, Captain 
Frederick on the Ruins of 
Babylon, vol. i., p. 130, 131. 
Rich's Memoirs, p. 43, 44. 
Babylon shall be an aston- " I cannot portray," says 
ishment. Every one that go- Captain Mignan, " the over- 
eth by shall be astonished, powering sensation of rever- 
ter. 1., 13 ; li., 37, 41. ential awe that possessed my 

mind while contemplating 
the extent and magnitude of 
ruin and devastation on every 
side." — Mignarts Travels, p. 
117. Sir R. K. Porter, Rich, 
&c. 
The Lord will do his pleas- " It was impossible to behold 
ure in Babylon, Isa. xlviii., 14. this scene, and not to be re- 
Every purpose of the Lord minded of how exactly the 
shall be performed against predictions of Isaiah and Jere- 
Babylon, Jer. 1., 29. I will miah have been fulfilled, even 
bring upon that land all my in the appearance Babylon 
words which I have pro- was doomed to present; that 
nounced against it, even all she should never be inhabit- 
that is written in this book, ed ; that the Arabian should 
Jer. xxv., 13. not pitch his tent there; that 

she should become heaps ; 
that her cities should be a 
desolation, a dry land, and a 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 41f 

wilderness !" — KeppeVs Nar- 
rative, p. 197. Rich, Porter, 
Mignan, Buckingham, &c. 

A single fact, as Fox has said, is worth a thousand argu- 
ments ; and to set about a proof of the inspiration of the 
Jewish prophets, after having placed these predictions and 
facts before the reader, would be an impeachment of his 
understanding, as incapable of comprehending the plainest 
truth ; and of his heart, as seared and hardened in unbelief, 
beyond the possibility of conviction. Adopting again, in the 
conclusion as at the commencement, the definition given by 
an enemy, we would say, " if by a prophet we are to sup- 
pose a man to whom the Almighty communicated some 
event that would take place in future, either there were such 
men or there were not." And if any truth be so clear that 
it cannot be misunderstood, and so evident that it cannot be 
denied, it is a truth that there were such men, and that mani- 
fold events, which may now be known of all men, were 
communicated to them, which God alone could have reveal- 
ed. The prophecies of Scripture bear no similitude what- 
ever to any random conjectures of future events, such as 
short-sighted mortals could form. They are most distinct 
and definite ; and the events which they marked, with all the 
accuracy which the closest inspection could enable an eye- 
witness to portray, are the most marvellous that have ever 
been recorded in the history of the world. They have proved 
independent of a thousand contingences, any one of which 
might, humanly speaking, have rendered each of them abor- 
tive ; and their fulfilment is the result of a countless number 
and variety of causes, which, in a long succession of ages, 
have all successively conspired to further, and ultimately to 
perfect, the very end that was declared from the beginning. 

Men. may cavil at the word of God and deride his judg- 
ments ; but from the high places of infidelity, witnesses must 
come forth to prove that his word is true, and that his judg- 
ments are sure. The undesigned and conclusive testimony 
of the talented academician, who, without a pilgrim's spirit, 
sojourned long in the land of Palestine, is worth that of 
many pilgrims. The facts which he adduced and accumu- 
lated, instead of showing, as he thought, that all revelation 
is false, and that belief in it is the cause of desolation, give 
direct evidence of inspiration, and show what ruin the re- 
jection of the everlasting covenant has wrought. And they 
need but to be placed, as above, side by side with the words 
of the prophets, in order that the author of the Ruins of 
Cities and Revolutions of Empires may be set up against all 
men beside, who would gainsay the proved truths, that the 
God of Israel is the Lord, and that the prophets spake by 



48 EXtSTING PROOFS OF THE 

the inspiration of his Spirit. And the infidel chief not only 
contends like an indomitable hero in our cause, but thus 
irrefutably reasons, like a philosopher, in our behalf. 

" How long will man importune the heavens with unjust 
complaint] How long with vain clamours will he accuse 
Fate as the author of his calamities 1 "Will he then never open 
his eyes to the light, and his heart to the insinuations of truth 
and reason? This truth everywhere presents itself in ra- 
diant brightness, and he does not see it ! The voice of rea- 
son strikes his ear, and he does not hear it ! Unjust man ! 
if you can for a moment suspend the delusion which fasci- 
nates your senses ; if your heart be capable of comprehend- 
ing the language of argumentation, interrogate these ruins ! 
read the lessons which they present to you ! And yon sacred 
temples ! venerable tombs ! walls once glorious ! the witness- 
es of twenty different ages appear in the cause of nature her- 
self ! come to the tribunal of sound understanding, to bear 
testimony against an unjust accusation, to confound the dec- 
lamations of false wisdom or hypocritical piety, and avenge 
the heavens and the earth of the man who calumniates 
them !" " For myself, I swear by all laws, human and divine, 
by the laws of the human heart, that the hypocrite and the 
deceiver shall be themselves deceived; the unjust man shall 
perish in his rapacity, and the tyrant in his usurpation ; the 
sun shall change its course before folly shall prevail over 
wisdom and science, before stupidity shall surpass prudence 
in the delicate art of procuring to man his true enjoyments, 
and of building his happiness upon a solid foundation. Thus 
spoke the apparition."* 

Believers in Jesus, swear not at all. But an oath for con- 
firmation is not needful to show — nor need a spirit be evoked 
to tell — that the " truth presents itself in radiant brightness ;" 
that if the voice of reason were heard, and the delusion 
which fascinates the senses of the skeptic were suspended 
for a moment, the truth would be clearly seen and infallibly 
believed : the declamations of a false philosophy would be 
confounded, and the heavens and the earth, and the word of 
Him that made them, " be avenged of the man who calum- 
niates them ;" that the deceiver is himself deceived, and that of 
Volney and of each of his compeers it may be said, Thou 
art the man ; and that " the sun shall change its course be- 
fore folly shall prevail over wisdom ;" before infidelity shall 
triumph over faith ; before the happiness of man shall be 
built on any other foundation than that which the Lord hath 
laid ; and before any or all the gates of hell shall prevail 

* Volney's Ruins, c. 3. English Translation. The original, which is 
still better, is inserted in the Appendix, No. 1. 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 49 

Against the word of the living God, or that word return unto 
him void, or fail to fulfil the purpose for which he sent it. 

What, then, but lighter than air, are all the vapouring dec- 
lamations of ungodly men against the inspiration of the Jew- 
ish prophets, when weighed in the balance of right reason, 
against facts so luminous and argumentation so convincing ] 
And how clearly, so that the dimmest eye may see, how 
loudly, so that the dullest ear may hear, do all these events 
show and proclaim that they were "communicated by the 
Almighty;" and that the seers of Israel were the prophets 
of the Lord ? And when a man like Paine, or Volney, or 
Voltaire, is heard to declaim against the inspiration of the 
prophets, and to stigmatize them as impostors and liars, may 
not every man who has eyes to see clearly discern that he 
is one of those false teachers, and presumptuous and self-willed 
scoffers, who, as also foretold in Scripture, were to arise in 
the last days, and have now arisen, who speak evil of the 
things that they understand not ; ivho speak great swelling 
words of vanity to allure others, promising them liberty, while 
they themselves are the children of corruption, and foaming out 
their own shame ? And may we not look on such a man as 
furnishing, by his words and the ignorance they display, by 
his acts and the impiety they show forth, as plain a proof, 
even in his derision against it, of the inspiration he denies, 
as if we were to stand on any of the ruins of Babylon, and 
hear the cry of a wild beast, the hissing of a serpent, or the 
hooting of an owl, or as if we saw in Petra the vultures 
gathered every one with her mate, and heard the screech- 
owl scream in the midst of the city devoted to perpetual des- 
olation 1 Without convincing himself of a love of darkness, 
akin to that of the bird of night, no man can " shut his eyes 
against the light, or his ear against the voice of reason." 

If asked a reason of our faith in the inspiration of the 
Prophets, an answer may be given to every question, and an 
event may be shown for every prediction. Invoking ruined 
cities by their names, Volney exclaims, " Oh names, for ever 
glorious ! celebrated fields ! famous countries ! how replete 
is your aspect with sublime instruction ! How many pro- 
found truths are written on the surface of this earth ! Ye 
places that have witnessed the life of man in so many different 
ages, unveil the causes of his misfortunes, teach him true wis- 
dom, and let the experience of past ages become a mirror of 
instruction, and a germe of happiness to present and future 
generations !"* Let skeptics, then, at the bidding of their mas- 
ter, and let all practical as well as professed unbelievers, if 
their hearts be capable of comprehending the language of ar- 
gumentation or the evidence of facts, interrogate these ruins. 

* Volney's Ruins. 
E 



50 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE 

And, without consulting a seducing spirit, let them discern 
the sublime instruction with which their aspect is replete ; 
let the experience of past ages and the sight of existing facts 
be a mirrror of instruction, in which to view the radiant 
brightness of prophetic inspiration ; and, no longer slow of 
heart to believe what Moses and the Prophets have spoken, 
their faith shall be built on " a solid foundation." 

Light from heaven rests on every ruin ; and they all beam 
witli brighter glories and are full of richer treasures than 
ever. Broken wreaths of garlands wrought in marble ; shat- 
tered symbols of imperial power, itself gone for ever ; and 
fractured fragments of senseless gods, all graven by the 
hands of slaves ; columns once the ornament of cities, now 
memorials of the places where they stood ; palaces converted 
into heaps of dust, and walls long the wonder of the world, 
now searched for in vain, set forth conspicuously to view 
the withering and blasting blight that has passed on human 
glory. But He who makes the lichen to grow upon the Ice- 
land rocks, and concentrates on them the substance of the 
richest nourishment, has scattered his word over the wide- 
spread field of ruins, as good seed covering a fertile plain; 
and that word needs to be but rationally and rightly appre- 
hended in " every heart capable of comprehending the lan- 
guage of argumentation," to form, in a manner no skeptic 
could wot of, u a germe of happiness to present and future 
generations." 

" The profound truths" which these ruins declare " are so 
manifest that they are ' written on the surface of the earth.' 
Their testimony is so ample, that their very ' aspect is re- 
plete with Divine instruction ;' and the evidence they supply 
is so luminous and convincing, that each fact or feature an- 
swers to the written word, as, in a ' mirror,' face answers to 
face. And when interrogated touching the causes of man's 
misfortunes, and charged to teach him true wisdom, they all 
— like men risen from the dead, appealing to a testimony as 
high as their own — exclaim with one voice, " Ye have Moses 
and the Prophets, hear them. They foretold the effect which 
you see ; and they, too, unveiled the cause. From them may 
ye learn that the judgments which a mysterious God has ex- 
ercised on us were not spoken in secret in a dark place, but are 
as the light that goeth forth. Ye may read them, as they are 
written in His word. For no evil has come on us but what 
He revealed to his servants the prophets. They were set 
over the nations and kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, 
and to destroy, and to throw dozen — as ye behold us now — and 
— as shall yet be seen — to build, and to plant * By his proph- 
ets the Lord has hewn us down. His judgments were ut 

* Jer. i., 10. 



INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 51 

tered against us as touching our wickedness. His word has 
been our burden, and has brought us to the dust ; but iniquity 
has been our ruin, and has made us what we are. The chil- 
dren of Israel forsook the covenant of the Lord God of their 
fathers ; and the anger of the Lord was kindled against this 
land to bring upon it all the curses that are written in his 
book.* And, because of the iniquity of them that dwell 
therein, the land still mourneth. For three transgressions of 
Judah and for four — for three transgressions of Ammon, 
Moab, Edom, Tyrus, Gaza, &c, and for four — the Lord did 
not take away the punishment thereof. f They all multiplied 
their words, and blasphemies, and transgressions against the 
Lord; and his word went forth against them. In their pride 
they exalted themselves to heaven ; and they have been 
brought down to hell. Babylon the great, proud as Lucifer, 
the son of the morning, has been cut down to the ground, be- 
cause it was full of iniquity, and strove against the Lord. 
The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, and hath ren- 
dered unto them the evil they had done. True and faithful 
are his judgments. And were there not a veil upon the 
heart in reading Moses and the prophets, the causes of man's 
misfortunes lie unveiled and to his view. Do men consult 
us that they may learn true wisdom 1 we can teach it by in- 
terrogating them. Is not he, whose w r ord hath brought us 
to the dust, the Ruler among the nations ? Who hath declared 
this from ancient time, and told it from that time ] is not he 
the Lord, the Holy One of Israel 1 Who hath hardened him- 
self against Him, and prospered I Or who can resist his 
power, or turn back his word, or abide the destruction that 
cometh from the Almighty ] Have not the things which the 
prophets said come to pass ] And did they not speak as the 
Lord gave them utterance ? Has not, as you see, every des- 
olation a token to show ; and has not, as you hear, every ruin 
a tongue to tell in ' reason's ear' that the word of prophecy is 
sure ? And do you not know that he who declared it is the 
Lord, and that there is no God else beside him 1 ' Names ! 
for ever glorious !' do you call us 1 And do you not see that 
righteousness and glory belong unto the Lord, but unto us 
confusion and shame \ Come and see how iniquity has been 
our burden; and how cities and countries have been brought 
at last to do homage to the glory of the Lord, and to magnify 
the word which the kingdoms and nations would not hear. 
Without a man of our cities to answer, may we not tell and 
c teach' you that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of ' wis- 
dom,' and to depart from evil is understanding ; that sinners 
shall be consumed out of the earth, and the wicked be no 
more ; and that, if the fear of the Lord be not there, the 

* Deut. xxix., 25, 27. * Amos h andii. 



52 THE APPROPRIATION Of 

proudest of the cities of the nations shall become as one of* 
us ? Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die ? If you hear not 
Moses and the prophets, neither would you be pursuaded 
though one rose from the dead. According to their word, 
we wait the time when God shall turn away iniquity from 
Jacob ; when, as judgment now coincides with judgment, 
blessing shall harmonize with blessing: when He that scat- 
tered Israel shall have gathered him, and his light shall break 
forth as the morning, and they that be of him shall build the 
old wastes and raise up the desolations of many generations, 
and he shall be called the repairer of the breach, the re- 
storer of paths to dwell in.* Then a new song shall be put 
into our mouths. The wilderness and the solitary place shall 
be glad for them ; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as 
the rose. They shall see the glory and the excellence of 
the Lord." 

The first portion of this demonstration of the truth of 
Christianity is that of the inspiration of the Jewish prophets. 
And while light thus breaks forth on the dark history of man, 
their words shining over it as the stars fixed in the firmament 
of heaven shine into the darkness of night, is it not wise — as 
an apostle declares it to be well — to take heed to the more sure 
word of prophecy, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, 
until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts 1 
knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of 
any private interpretation (that the event, not the fancy of 
any man must interpret it). For the prophecy came not in 
old time by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as 
they were moved by the Holy Ghost. f 

Keeping in view the marshalled, host of irrefutable facts to 
which the word of God by the prophets has given irresistible 
power, and which stand ever ready at a call, we have only 
— with the same weapon from the armory of heaven, the 
sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God — to pass from 
the tent of one enemy to the tower of another, in order to 
turn it too into a stronghold of our faith. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE APPROPRIATION OF HUME'S ARGUMENT AGAINST MIRACLES, &C 

Falsehood is ever opposed to Truth ; and it has been the 
fate of the Christian religion, that false arguments have been 

* Isa. but, 8, 12. f 2 Peter L, 19-21. 



HUME S ARGUMENT, 53 

urged against it, as false witnesses were sought against its 
Author. 

Recent historical and geographical researches, which dis- 
close many facts relative to the revolutions of empires, and to 
the desolation of cities and countries, have been eagerly- 
seized on by zealous skeptics, in order that evidence against 
revelation might be extorted from them; but, as we have 
seen, these facts themselves lead directly to the very oppo- 
site conclusion, establishing the faith which they were ad- 
duced to destroy. 

In like manner, with equal eagerness, though not less futile 
against the truth, nor more helpful to the indefensible cause 
of error, the discoveries of modern science have been resort- 
ed to in order to forge from them a weapon against the Chris- 
tian faith. But the changeful history of man, which marks 
the direful revolutions of empires, and the modern discov- 
eries of physical science, which prove that all nature is the 
work of Him who changeth not, are not only appealed to in 
vain for such a purpose, but they unite in reversing the rash 
sentence of a vain philosophy, which is quicksighted as to the 
history of man and the works of nature, but which hath not 
an ear to hear the word of God. 

The march of intellect has now become a hackneyed phrase. 
And great, truly, has been the recent intellectual progress of 
man over the rich domains of nature. In the discovery, com- 
bination, and classification of an innumerable multitude of 
facts, throughout all the various departments of natural his- 
tory and philosophy, whether ascertained by observation, ex- 
periment, or calculation — from the structures of animals and 
plants, the relation of substances, and the forms of crys- 
tals, to the motions and magnitude of the earth, of the moon, 
and of the planets — there is so clear a manifestation of the 
regularity which pervades the universe, that design is stamped 
on every part ; and the whole order and course of nature is 
marked out as the workmanship of the same Almighty hand. 
There is a consistent harmony in all material things, analo- 
gous to the power of attraction which links them together. 
And there is, to use the beautiful language of Play fair, a 
" wisdom w T hich presides over the least as well as the great- 
est things ; over the falling of a stone as well as the revolu- 
tion of a planet, and which not only numbers and names the 
stars, but even the atoms that compose them." 

The man who can look upon the works of nature and be 
an atheist, need not be told that there is a God. If the first 
great truth be not " clearly seen and understood by the things 
that are made," it will scarcely be learned by the ear. But 
the more closely that men look into the works of nature, 
every new discovery multiplies the proofs of Divine wisdom 

E 2 



54 THE APPROPRIATION OF 

and power. And, in all reason, it must be owned that it is 
the fool ivho hath said in his heart that there is no God. 

But while all things bear witness of the omniscience of 
the Creator, error is natural to man. And it is not any con- 
tradiction to the declaration of Scripture relative to the de- 
ceitfulness and wickedness of the heart, that, from the very- 
order which God has impressed upon his works, an argument 
should have been drawn against the reception and belief of 
his word. So perfect is that order, that it is held to be abso- 
lutely unchangeable. The reasonableness of believing a mir- 
acle — or the infringement, violation, or suspension of the 
course of nature — on any evidence whatever, has been ex- 
pressly denied and derided ; and because that God's works 
are perfect, assent has been refused to all the evidences of 
a revelation of his will. But is it not the sum of such phi- 
losophy, that because God has given laws to nature, he can- 
not give and accredit as his own a law to man? 

It might have savoured more of genuine wisdom, as well 
as of a becoming humility, had men closed their inquiries 
into the works of creation by any other argument than that 
which seems to assume a restriction of the power of the 
Creator. It might not, perhaps, have been unphilosophical 
to think that the same Almighty Being who, in such mani- 
fest wisdom and power, had established the universe in or- 
der and set on it his seal, had still reserved to himself the 
authority and right of modifying or suspending, for a purpose 
which he had or might have decreed from the creation of 
the world, that order which he had impressed upon nature. 
Its laws, though regulating all material things, and though 
worlds hung upon nothing revolve by them, are not laws to 
their Author, of whom they are but the word, and of whose 
power they are but a symbol and a proof. The plainest prin- 
ciples of reason may serve to confute the most refined spec- 
ulations of a false philosophy, whenever it becomes their 
purpose, alike unhallowed and unwise, to show that, while 
from an atom to a world all things give proof of infinite wis- 
dom, the observed order (that men hence call a law) of na- 
ture, which demonstrates the Almighty power of God, de- 
monstrates, also, that a miracle is impossible, or, in other 
words, that the Most High has left himself powerless to send 
an accredited message unto man. It is not for unsophisticated 
and unprejudiced reason to believe that, amid infinite tokens 
of wisdom, the construction of a machine whereby man might 
measure the power of the Deity was the ultimate design of 
the Creator in the formation of the universe, or that the 
true lesson to be learned from its " mechanism" is how to 
set a compass on his works. Analogy, at least, from which 
alone, perhaps, a just and plausible conclusion could here be 
drawn, might lead us rather to infer that, as laws have beeji 



HUME S ARGUMENT. 55 

giyen to matter, so, in conformity to its nature, a law might 
be given, or a system established, for the regulation of the 
mind ; and as uniformity is everywhere traced in matter, the 
moral world would not, under the same good and omnipotent 
sovereign, be for ever abandoned to lawlessness and sin. 
The mechanism of the universe unfolds not, indeed, the moral 
government of the Father of Spirits. The world by wisdom 
knew not God ; though it might clearly discern his eternal 
power. Yet the more closely that a rational inquirer, when 
accustomed to look upon the operation of His hands, scans 
the universal arrangement which external nature presents, 
and the wisdom which it displays, he might, in moral discern- 
ment, the more vividly see the want of a corresponding har- 
mony in the spiritual state of man ; and not without reason 
might he deem it possible that the law which has given its 
perfect structure to the smallest insect might be suspended 
for a moment, or in a few solitary instances, to call to like 
order the spirits of all flesh, and, by such a manifest interpo- 
sition of his power, to give an evidence to man, who is placed 
at the head of earthly creatures, that it is the will of Jeho- 
vah that harmony should prevail over the moral as well as 
over the natural world. And as the wisdom of God is seen 
in every particle of matter ; as his goodness fills the earth, 
and his power hath lighted up the heavens, there is surely 
no necessity or even warrant from thence to think that he 
would not — it were blasphemy to say that he could not — give 
demonstration of his power in order to accredit a system of 
salvation, calculated to renovate human nature which sin had 
ruined, and (however introduced) to wipe out the only blot 
on earth that has stained his works, which lies in the heart 
of man, whence issues the wickedness that is followed by 
destruction. The wisdom that is perfect does not necessa- 
rily imply the exclusion of the power where there is the need 
of healing, any more than the most perfect knowledge of 
anatomy would deter the surgeon from an operation by which 
the life of his patient might be preserved, for fear of disturb- 
ing the perfect texture of the skin. 

The argument here alluded to is so essentially atheistical 
and self-contradictory, that its united impiety and absurdity 
could not escape the observation of skeptics. " Can God 
work miracles ? that is to say, can he derogate from the laws 
which he has established ?" asks Rousseau. " The question," 
he adds, " treated seriously, would be impious if it were not 
absurd." 

Well, therefore, might such an argument be at once dis- 
carded by every believer in God. But being itself an evi- 
dence of scriptural inspiration — supplying a calculus, when 
rightly applied, most powerful and complete for demonstra- 
ting, to a degree that imagination could not have conceived, 



56 THE APPROPRIATION OF 

one great branch of Christian evidence — and being founded 
on a principle, deducible from all the works of nature, which 
is the very basis of another leading evidence of Christianity, 
this very argument of scoffers is as available on our side 
as any fact confirmatory of prophecy can possibly be ; and 
it cannot be here passed over without our showing again that 
they who would fain be against us are for us. The Chris- 
tian, in taking their spoil from his enemies, only reclaims his 
own ; and the surreptitious spoils of Amalek may without 
injustice or profanation be laid as a rich and hallowed incense 
on the altar of truth ; so much the more precious, as being, 
on their part, neither an intended nor free-will offering. 

Now, as of old, though in a different sense, it may be 
asked, is Saul also among the prophets? Some professed 
gainsayers have dwelt in metaphysical abstractions, some 
have sought to scale the heavens, while others have pried into 
the bowels of the earth, in search of a witness against reve- 
lation ; but it has fared no better with them all than those 
who catered for skepticism amid historical details and geo- 
graphical descriptions. Let the potsherds strive with the 
potsherds of the earth ; but wo unto him that striveth with 
his Maker. Human science, however excellent in whatever 
rightly pertains to it, can never triumph, nor be devoted to 
its proper end, when, as the w r ord or device of fallible man, 
it is set against the word and counsel of an omniscient God. 
The cause that is His, if his indeed it be, cannot, like the 
arguing of man with man about any vain thoughts of theirs, 
be ultimately left in such a conflict to a doubtful issue. Every 
high imagination which exalteth itself against the knowledge 
of God must be cast down ; and all that the pride of reason 
can urge must be answered. The place at last for all the 
enemies of Jesus is beneath his feet ; and there every argu- 
ment, as well as every fact, which bears upon the evidence of 
his faith, must finally be found in its allotted station. In seek- 
ing proof against the truth, were man to search creation 
through, he must return empty; or were he, with that intent, 
to climb the tree of knowledge to its height, it is but to show 
that he is naked. But though one purpose be not achieved, 
another is accomplished ; the record of nature confirms that 
of revelation ; and, after all the labours of the adversary of 
the gospel, the work which he has finished is fitted for the 
Christian's purpose, and the fruit which he brings down is ripe 
for the Christian's use. 

Whether it be drawn out in metaphysical subtility by Hume, 
founded on as a principle in judicial reasoning by Bentham, 
or set forth as the result of mathematical demonstration by 
La Place, there is one great argument against the credibil- 
ity of miracles, already referred to, to which they all appeal 
as incontrovertible ; an argument which Hume has styled an 



HUME'S ARGUMENT. 57 

everlasting check against delusion, and which alone is char- 
acteristic of that high school of modern skepticism of which 
these are the redoubted masters. The air, the heavens, and 
the earth have all been explored for materials to establish it. 
All evidence of revelation has been discredited ; all testimony- 
whatever to the truth of miracles, in confirmation of reli- 
gion, has been held untenable and inadmissible : and all wit- 
nesses for God have been discarded from the court of reason, 
and are refused a hearing; because, as it is said, the laws of 
nature are inviolable. 

But the academy, though science has there concentrated, 
her labours, is not destined to triumph over the college of 
the apostles, though they were unskilled in human lore. „ 

It is the prerogative of the Deity to turn by creative power 
the darkness into light ; and Divine wisdom shines forth in 
all his works. But, from the fatal perversity of man, the high- 
est exercise and "largest discourse" of reason may be made 
to deepen the moral darkness that naturally, rests upon the 
mind, and to render it incompetent to comprehend the light 
or the witness that is borne to it. The main, or, rather, the 
only argument against the credibility of miracles, owes its 
origin to the discoveries of modern science. And, as these 
have advanced, it has been urged more generally and strongly, 
till it has taken the lead in every cavil, and admits not of 
any concession in behalf of any conceivable or possible evi- 
dence of revelation. And it may not be amiss to trace its 
origin and its progress, if happily we may be enabled, with 
every lover of the truth, to rejoice over its obsequies. It 
would, indeed, be a blessed task to lay a helping hand to the 
demolition of that bane of immortal hope and barrier to Chris- 
tian faith which obstructs the way of life and worketh death ; 
to rescue the unstable and unwary from being the victims of 
the perverted ingenuity of those who, having argued them- 
selves out of the use of reason as well as out of the need of 
salvation, neither enter into the kingdom of heaven them- 
selves, nor suffer others to enter in. 

Ignorant as men were in ancient times of the perfect regu- 
larity of the laws of nature, now fully ascertained to be estab- 
lished throughout the universe, the great skeptical argument 
of modern times entered not into the imaginations of the 
early gainsayers. More candid than their recent imitators, 
they admitted the truth of the miracles, but denied that these 
gave proof that the doctrine was of God. Their pagan my- 
thology and blind belief in the power of evil spirits perverted 
their judgments, and restrained them from distinguishing be- 
tween natural phenomena or false and supposititious mira- 
cles, and supernatural events or actual violations of the laws 
of nature. All ancient history is full of the blind or super- 
stitious credulity which universally prevailed; and which, 



58 THE APPROPRIATION OF 

even yet, is only imperfectly dissipated from among men; 
that originates in ignorance of the order of nature, and of the 
unvarying uniformity of her operations. A few instances 
may be selected. 

It was customary for the Romans, on beholding an eclipse, 
to make the loudest possible noise by striking on vessels of 
brass, and to hold up lighted fagots and torches in the air, 
as if to rouse and relight the expiring or extinguished lumi- 
nary. The sight of the same natural event paralyzed armies, 
and, as in the case of the Macedonians on the invasion of 
their country by the Romans, and of the Thebans under Pe- 
lopidas, rendered them incapable to encounter the enemy 
or to quit the spot on which they stood. The inspection of 
the entrails of a victim could daunt the heart of the fiercest 
conqueror, or urge on to immediate battle the most cautious 
general. Soothsaying was a trade. Oracles were consulted 
from every quarter. Auguries were of old universally re- 
garded. And every peculiarity or inexplicable incident, how- 
ever insignificant, was accounted an omen. The spirit of 
armies rose or sunk according to the number or appearance 
of birds, and the direction of their flight was interpreted by 
soothsayers as signs of victory or defeat. A dictator, with 
absolute authority, was elected by the Roman senate to fix 
a nail in the door of a temple, in order to stay a pestilence. 
A few unintelligible words on a scrap of paper are prized as 
a charm or antidote from evil by the ignorant Arab, African, 
Indian, of modern as well as of ancient times. And even in 
the middle of the fifteenth century of the Christian era, when 
the true philosophy of nature was beginning to dawn, the 
pope, in his wisdom and infallibility, directed public prayers 
to be offered up on account of the appearance of a comet. 
All history is full of illustrations of such blind and supersti- 
tious credulity, which originated in the general or universal 
ignorance of the order of nature. The light of science has 
dissipated the darkness, in respect to the knowledge of mat- 
ter, in which men were previously involved. And it is now 
held as a principle, that " it is to the imperfection of the hu- 
man mind, and not to any irregularity in the nature of things, 
that all our ideas of chance and probability are to be referred." 
" The farther that our knowledge has extended, the more 
phenomena have been brought from the dominion of chance, 
and placed under the government of physical causes ; and 
the farther off have the boundaries of darkness been carried. 
It was, says M. Laplace, to the phenomena not supposed to 
be subjected to the regulation of fixed laws, that superstition 
took hold, for the purpose of awakening the fears and en- 
slaving the minds of men. The dominion of chance is suf- 
fering constant diminution ; and the anarch old may still com- 



hume's argument. 59 

plain, as in Milton, of the encroachments that are continually 
making on his empire."* 

When the human mind was rescued from the delusion of a 
blind credulity, its proneness to error became speedily mani- 
fest in the danger which arose of falling into the opposite 
extreme of an irrational skepticism, and all belief in any- 
thing supernatural was rejected as unwise. " The proba- 
bility of the continuance of the laws of nature," says La 
Place, "is superior, in our estimation, to every other evi- 
dence, and to that of historical facts the best established. 
One may judge, therefore, the weight of testimony neces- 
sary to prove a suspension of these laws, and how fallacious 
it is in such cases to apply the common rule of evidence." 
" The first author, we believe, who stated fairly the connex- 
ion between the evidence of testimony and the evidence of 
experience, was Hume, in his Essay on Miracles."! 

In a letter to Dr. Campbell, Hume states that the argu- 
ment first occurred to him in arguing with a Jesuit respect- 
ing a pretended miracle said to have been wrought in a con- 
vent ; and, as if marking its origin in these last days, he 
adds that Dr. Campbell would perhaps think that the sophis- 
try of it savoured of the place of its birth.% 

It is then a fact, that from the probability of the continu- 
ance of the laws of nature, an argument which now forms 
the characteristic standard of a host of unbelievers has been 
prominently urged against the belief of miracles, and, though 
till recently unthought of, is the confident boast of every 
scoffer in these enlightened times, when the knowledge of 
the laws of nature can be founded on as an argument. But, 
instead of fearing to meet it, the Christian may well claim 
it as wholly on his side. And had it not been urged, and 
even had not all the peculiar importance been attached to it 
which there has been, the evidence of the Christian faith 
would have been lessened by the want of such an argument 
against it. However much men may seek deep to hide their 
counsel from the Lord, however long the genius of infidelity 
may defer to inspire its votaries with any novel imagina- 
tions, adapted for delusion and suited to the times, He with 
whom light dwelleth holds them in derision, and turns their 
scoffings into credentials of his word. Had Hume looked 
into the Bible — which, it has been said, he never read — he 
would have found that his vaunted discovery, his everlasting 
check against delusion, was described by the apostle Peter 
seventeen centuries before the supposed period of its birth ; 
and that, instead of his being its original author, he could, in 
gtrict justice, have only claimed the right of being accounted 

* Edin. Review, vol. xxiii., p. 320, 321. 

t Ibid., p. 327, 329. J See Appendix No. iii. 



60 ' THE APPROPRIATION OF 

the first of those scoffers who, arising in the last days, were 
to urge it as an infallible argument against the evidence of 
the inspiration of scripture, of which, as adopted and appro- 
priated by them, it is a manifest and direct confirmation. 
The scriptures are fulfilled in our hearing by the very argu- 
ment of our adversaries, and by it are they constituted wit- 
nesses for the truth, which they laboured so strenuously to 
overthrow. If they will learn nothing else from the word of 
Cod, they must own that they might have borrowed their 
own boasted reasoning, in which, on the completion of their 
philosophy, is concentrated the quintessence of their wisdom 
in respect to the " continuance of the laws of nature ;" for 
the presumed fact on which all their reasoning rests, that 
all things continue as they iv ere from the beginning of the crea- 
tion, was never more distinctly stated by themselves than 
in those very words of the apostle which foretold from the 
first what at last they would say. 

An apostle of Jesus could well affirm, " We are not igno- 
rant of the devices of Satan ; and thanks be to God, who 
always causeth us to triumph in Christ." And in token that 
their triumph should not fail at the last, Christians are en- 
joined to be mindful of the words which were spoken before 
by the holy prophets ; knowing this first, that there shall 
come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts, 
and saying, Where is the promise of his coming 1 for, since 
the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from 
the beginning of the creation* 

Man, proud in his knowledge of nature, will not look to 
the word of nature's God for instruction ; and yet in half a 
verse we may read the result of all the labours of modern 
philosophy which have been directed against the credibility 
of scriptural miracles. The march of intellect brings us in 
close contact with the truth, instead of having advanced, as 
many imagine, to the farthest extremity in an opposite 
direction. 

" On this rock," said Christ unto Peter, as recorded by the 
evangelist, " will I build my church, and the gates of hell 
shall not prevail against it." Peter was the first, as it is 
related, to preach the gospel ; and thousands were converted 
in a day, and the Christian church was founded. And in 
these last days — the last, it may be hoped, of the prevalence 
of infidelity, or of the perversion or suppression of the reli- 
gion of Jesus — in which skeptical philosophers have assumed 
the establishment of a principle subversive, as they think, of 
revelation, their loudest boasting is but a distant yet distinct 
echo of the words of the same apostle. It could only have 
been by inspiration of God that an, illiterate fisherman of 

* % Ymx \\\ n 3, 3, 4, 



hume's argument. 61 

Galilee looked through the darkness of many succeeding 
generations, and clearly saw what the light of modern sci- 
ence would reveal. He whose uncouth speech bewrayed 
him, and w T ho shrunk at the voice of a maidservant char- 
ging him with being a disciple of Jesus, at a time when his 
master was delivered into the hands of his enemies, not only 
afterward told under the name of an apostle what the most 
talented enemies of the gospel could ultimately urge against 
its truth, but he charges them as wilfully ignorant of scien- 
tific facts ; and it is from him we learn, in a manner the 
most conclusive, how their argument may not only be abso- 
lutely refuted, but rendered most available to the Christian 
cause. 

It has been the baast of scoffers, that the labours of all 
the theologians in Britain have for the last fifty years been 
directed in vain against the argument of Hume, identified 
with his name as having originated with him. And instead 
of entering on the various metaphysical and elaborate an- 
swers which have been given to it, or attempting to show 
that it is founded on a false hypothesis in regard to the na- 
ture of proof from testimony, or combating in any manner 
the plausible hypothesis that testimony cannot prove a mira- 
cle, because the laws of nature are inviolable, the apostle 
instructs us how with a word to reduce the philosophical scof- 
fers to silence by a direct denial of the assumed fact, on 
which alone their whole argument rests. All things have 
not continued as they were since the beginning of the crea- 
tion; the order of nature, as it now subsists, has not been 
always inviolable. And changes have been introduced, great 
as any miracle can be. It needs a better knowledge of the 
works of nature than unbelievers have avowed or reasoned 
from, to prove the fallacy of the boldest of their theories, to 
bring back proud science to do its appointed task in the ser- 
vice of the sanctuary, and to show that its noblest office is 
that of being a faithful handmaid of religion. 

Some enemies of the gospel have furnished a profusion of 
facts, which demonstrate, to a tittle, the literal truth of what 
the prophets foretold ; others have now said that which it is 
declared in scripture that they would finally say ; and when 
the time is now also come that science can give its com- 
mentary on these words of scripture which confute the scof- 
fers, we appeal on purpose and at large, in the first instance, 
to the authority of one on whom there rests not any suspi- 
cion of undue partiality or zeal in the cause of religion. 
Whenever the zealous defenders of the faith, enlightened by 
wisdom from above, shall issue from the Institute, the eman- 
cipation, moral not political, shall be far greater, and the revo- 
lution far more " glorious," than any which France has yet 
seen. 

F 



62 THE APPROPRIATION OF 

In answering the scoffers of the last days, who, idolizing 
reason and traducing scripture, reject all faith in anything 
supernatural, because, being deeply read in the laws of na- 
ture, they hold them inviolable, and account their continu- 
ance, in all ages, sure ; and who found their specious incredu- 
lity on the principle that all things have continued as they 
were since the beginning of the creation, the scriptures of 
truth, which they despise, convict them of folly, and thus set 
their wilful ignorance before the world. 

For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of 
God the heavens are of old, and the earth standing out op 

THE WATER AND IN THE WATER.* 

" The lowest and most level parts of the earth exhibit 
nothing, even when penetrated to a very great depth, but 
horizontal strata or layers composed of substances more or 
less varied, and containing almost all of them innumerable 
marine productions. Similar strata, with the same kind of 
productions, compose the lesser hills to a considerable height. 
Sometimes the shells are so numerous as to constitute of 
themselves the entire mass of the rock ; they rise to eleva- 
tions superior to every part of the ocean, and are found in 
places where no sea could have carried them at the present 
day, under any circumstances ; they are not only enveloped 
in loose sand, but are often enclosed in the hardest rocks. 
Every part of the earth, every hemisphere, every continent, 
every island of any extent exhibits the same phenomenon. "f 
" It is the sea which has left them in the places where they 
are now found. But this sea has remained for a certain pe- 
riod in those places ; it has covered them long enough, and 
with sufficient tranquillity to form those deposites, so regular, 
so thick, so extensive, and partly also so solid, which con- 
tain those remains of aquatic animals. The basin of the sea 
has therefore undergone one change at least, either in ex- 
tent or in situation ; such is the result of the very first search, 
and of the most superficial examinational^ 

" The traces of revolutions become still more apparent 
and decisive when we ascend a little higher, and approach 
nearer to the foot of the great chains. There are still found 
many beds of shells ; some of these are even thicker and 
more solid ; the shells are quite as numerous and as well 
preserved, but they are no longer of the same species. The 
strata which contain them are not so generally horizontal ; 
they assume an oblique position, and are sometimes almost 
vertical. While in the plains and low hills it was necessary 
to dig deep in order to discover the succession of the beds, 
we here discovered it at once by their exposed edges, as we 

*2Peteriii., 15. 

f Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, 5th ed., p. 7. 

t Ibid., p. 8. 



HUME S ARGUMENT, 65 

follow the valleys that have been produced by their disjunc- 
tion."* 

" These inclined strata, which form the ridges of the sec- 
ondary mountains, do not rest upon the horizontal strata of 
the hills which are situate at their base, and which form the 
first steps in approaching them ; but, on the contrary, dip un- 
der them, while the hills in question rest upon their declivi- 
ties. When we dig through the horizontal strata in the vi- 
cinity of mountains whose strata are inclined, we find these 
inclined strata reappearing below ; and even sometimes, 
when the inclined strata are not too elevated, their summit 
is crowned by horizontal ones. The inclined strata are 
therefore older than the horizontal strata; and as they must 
necessarily, at least the greatest number of them, have been 
formed in a horizontal position, it is evident that they have 
been raised, and that this change in their direction has been 
effected before the others were superimposed upon them."f 

" Thus the sea, previous to the disposition of the hori- 
zontal strata, had formed others, which, by the operation of 
problematical causes, were broken, raised, and overturned in 
a thousand ways;, and as several of these inclined strata 
which it had formed at more remote periods rise higher 
than the horizontal strata which have succeeded them and 
which surround them, the causes by which the inclination 
of these beds was effected had also made them project above 
the level of the sea, and formed islands of them, or at least 
shoals and inequalities ; and this must have happened, 
whether they had been raised by one extremity, or whether 
the depression of the opposite extremity had made the waters 
subside. Thus is the second result not less clear nor less 
satisfactorily demonstrated than the first, to every one who 
will take the trouble of examining the monuments on which 
it is established. "J 

" All admit that the porphyry and trap rocks have been 
pushed up from below ; but probably at a time when the 
whole was either covered by the ocean, or subjected to an 
enormous pressure by means of incumbent rocks, which 
have since been removed."^ 

" A glance at the best geological maps now constructed of 
the various countries in the Northern hemisphere, whether 
in North America or Europe, will satisfy the inquirer that 
the greater part of the present land has been raised from the 
deep^W 

" The primitive fluidity of the planets is clearly indicated 

* Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, 5th ed., p. 8, 9. 
t Ibid., p. 9. 
$ Ibid., p. 10. 

§ Edin. Review, No. chi., p. 72, Oct., 1830, 
|| Lyell's Geology, vol. i., p. 134, 135, 
F2 



66 THE APPROPRIATION OF 

by the compression of their figure, conformably to the laws 
of the mutual attraction of their molecules ; it is moreover 
demonstrated by the regular diminution of gravity, as we pro- 
ceed from the equator to the poles. The state of primitive 
fluidity to which we are conducted by astronomical phenom- 
ena is also apparent from those which natural history points 
out."* 

" All observers admit that the strata were formed beneath 
the ivaters, and have been subsequently converted into dry 
landy\ 

" All geologists will agree with Dr. Buckland, that the most 
perfect unity of plan can be traced in the fossil world, the mod- 
ifications which it has undergone, and that we can carryback 
our researches distinctly to times antecedent to the existence 
of man. We can prove that man had a beginning, and that 
all the species now contemporary with man, and many others 
which preceded, had also a beginning ; consequently, the pres- 
ent state of the organic world has not gone on from all eter- 
nity, as some philosophers have maintained. "J 

The precise accordance and identity of the words of the 
apostle with these results of recent scientific investigation, 
must be obvious to every reader ; and it can scarcely be less 
obvious that that man must have spoken by the inspiration 
of God, who, looking forward from a remote age to the pres- 
ent time, and back to the beginning of the creation, told at 
once what scoffers in the last days would say, as clearly as 
if he had heard them, and described the embyro world as 
correctly as if he had been an eyewitness of its rising out of 
the waters. 

The order of nature was not the same as it is now when 
the earth was void, and when not a living thing could possibly 
have existed in the globe we now inhabit, and when at a sub- 
sequent period none was to be found except among shelly 
strata then vivifying beneath the waters, now raised in 
mountains and indurated into rock. They who stagger at 
the belief of anything supernatural forget that there was a 
time, of which the structure of the earth gives evidence, 
when the present order of nature, as affecting all animal and 
vegetable being, did not exist, and when man, who unscrupu- 
lously sets God's word aside " in calculating the probability 
of the continuance of the laws of nature," was not himself 
created ; nor any worm to be found on earth to raise its head 
against its Maker. 

In referring to the original formation of the earth as well 
as to its final destruction, the apostle, while exposing the 

* La Place's System of the World, Harte's Translation, vol. ii., p. 365. 
t Buckland's Bridgwater Treatise, p. 44. 

\ Address of the President of the Geological Society (Lyell) at the An- 
niversary, 1837. See Philosophical Magazine for May, 1837, p. 389. 



hume's argument, 67 

wilful ignorance of scoffers, warns Christians not to be igno- 
rant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a 
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. And the 
fact of the comparatively recent origin of man, by geologi- 
cal demonstration as well as by Scriptural record, the last 
of created beings on earth, is of itself conclusive against 
the skeptic that all things have not continued as they were 
since the beginning of the creation. Nature herself, from the 
vaunted absolute uniformity of whose laws the power of their 
Author has been impugned, loudly testifies of the interposi- 
tion of Almighty and creative power, not only after the 
earth was divided from the waters, but even after the pres- 
ent order of animal existence, man excepted, had been es- 
tablished. 

" We need not," says Mr. Lyell, " dwell on the low anti- 
quity of our species, for it is not controverted by any geolo- 
gist ; indeed, the real difficulty which we experience consists 
in tracing back the signs of man's existence on the earth to 
that comparatively modern period when species, now his 
contemporaries, began to predominate. If there be a differ- 
ence of opinion respecting the occurrence in certain deposites 
of the remains of man and his works, it is always in refer- 
ence to strata of the most modern order," &c* 

The conclusion to be plainly and legitimately adduced 
from this fact alone, as fatal to the hypothesis of Hume, and 
as directly applied to subvert it, is, still more happily, not 
left to the theologian. For, ready to our hand and coming 
timely to our aid, the following extract, too precious to be 
curtailed, supplies an illustration of its conclusiveness in this 
respect, from the same source from which the bane flowed, 
before it was, as now it is, followed by the antidote. And 
may not the Christian hence augur well and hope much, 
not only for the final triumph of the gospel, of which he can 
never doubt, but for the admission, by such an opening, of 
a more glorious light than has heretofore entered into the 
mind of many a dark idolater of mere human science ? It 
must, at least, be pleasing to see how, on the abjuration of 
wilful ignorance, the progress of knowledge, when rightfully 
followed out, prepares the way for the wisdom that is from 
above ; or how, in those pages wherein the very predicted 
saying of the scoffers in the last days was once advocated, 
the very argument also, implied in the words of the apostle, 
has now been as unconsciously urged to expose the utter 
fallacy of the delusion. 

" The science of geology is very properly referred to, for 
the striking example which it offers of the successful appli- 
cation of the hypothesis of uniform causation properly un- 
derstood. Present phenomena and their causes have been 

* ^yell's Geology, vol. i., p. 153, 154. 



68 THE APPROPRIATION OF 

most skilfully combined and used, so as to furnish us with 
the story of a period which has itself transmitted for our in- 
formation nothing but mere strata and deposites. But the 
late discoveries in geology lead irresistibly to another obser- 
vation. It is one of still greater importance ; for it seems 
to us to be fatal to the theory [Hume's] which we have 
presumed to call a misconception of the uniformity of causation, 
as signifying an unalterable sequence of causes and effects. 
Those who have read neither Cuvier nor Lyell are yet 
aware that the human race did not exist from all eternity. 
Certain strata have been identified with the period of maris first 
appearance. We cannot do better than quote from Dr. Pritch- 
ard's excellent book {Researches into the Physical History of 
Man/and) his comment and application of this fact. 'It is 
well known that all the strata of which our continents are 
composed were once a part of the ocean's bed. There is 
no land in existence that ivas not formed beneath the surface 
of the sea, or that has not risen from beneath the water. Man- 
kind had a beginning ; since we can look back to the period 
when the surface on which they live began to exist. We 
have only to go back in imagination to that age ; to repre- 
sent to ourselves that at a certain time there existed no- 
thing in this globe but unformed elements ; and that in the 
next period there had begun to breathe and move, in a par- 
ticular spot, a human creature ; and we shall already have 
admitted, perhaps, the most astonishing miracle recorded in 
the whole compass of the sacred writings. After contem- 
plating this phenomenon, we shall find no difficulty in allow- 
ing that events which would now be so extraordinary that 
they might be termed almost incredible — our confidence in 
the continuance of the present order of things having been 
established by the uniform experience of so many ages — 
would at one time have given no just cause for wonder or 
skepticism. In the first ages of the world, events were con- 
ducted by operative causes of a different kind from those 
which are now in action ; and there is nothing contrary to 
common sense or to probability in the supposition that this 
sort of agency continued to operate from time to time, as 
long as it was required ; that is, until the physical and moral 
constitution of things now existing was completed, and 
the design of Providence attained.' (Vol. ii., p. 594.) No 
greater changes," continues the reviewer, " can be well ima- 
gined in the ordinary sequence of cause and effect, such as 
constituted the laws of nature, as they had been previously 
established, than took place on the day when man was, for 
the first time, seen among the creatures of the earth."* 
A plain fact may sometimes put down the most confident 

* Edinburgh Review, No. civ., p. 396, 397. 



69 

boasting. And the great argument which, in the opinion of 
its author, was to be useful as long as the world endures, is 
found, on examining its texture, to be marred, like the girdle 
that was hidden by the prophet for a season, and as to its in- 
tended use, to be profitable for nothing. The seeming strong- 
tower, when close contact is tried, proves of aerial and im- 
palpable form, and the attempt is vain to grasp the shadow 
of a reason where there is nothing but the " baseless fabric 
of a vision." The wonder-working delusion, conjured up by 
the great metaphysical necromancer of modern times, by 
which he was to cheat the world out of all belief in revela- 
tion, may be detected and exposed by any child who can 
read a verse of the New Testament; just as the infantine 
charm and dread, which have their unknown source in the 
magic lantern, are gone so soon as the scene is opened or 
the light of day is let in. 

" A miracle," says Hume, " is a violation of the laws of 
nature ; and as a firm and unalterable experience has estab- 
lished these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very 
nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experi- 
ence can possibly be imagined."* 

But as all things have not continued as they were at the 
beginning of the creation ; as the laws of nature are not un- 
alterable, but have been altered ; as a change, since their 
origin, has been introduced, great as any change can be well 
imagined, it is as clear as any proof can possibly be, that 
any argument which rests entirely on their presumed abso- 
lute inviolability is founded not on a fact, but on a falsehood, 
and is therefore necessarily devoid of all truth as well as of 
all reason. The like cause can never more indubitably pro- 
duce the like e fleet, than the recent origin of man, of which 
the geological date is engraven on the earth, gives demon- 
stration of the interposition of almighty and creative power, 
and of the operation of the first Great Cause ; to which surely 
it must be admitted that all things are subservient and sub- 
ordinate. The palpable proof of the exercise of this power, 
after the present terrestrial order began, shows that experi- 
ence is on the side of miracles, and that the same Almighty 
Being who ordained the laws of nature, and afterward intro- 
duced a mighty change, may possibly, for wise purposes, 
better known to himself than to man, suspend them again. 
It cannot therefore be, from the very nature of the fact, that 
there is a direct and full proof againsi the existence of any 
miracle ; for, instead of there being any soundness in so ab- 
solute a rule, as scoffers on a false* assumption have laid 
down, the denial of a miracle, " perhaps even of the most 
astonishing miracle recorded in the whole compass of the 
sacred scriptures," would be the denial of an admitted fact. 

* Hume's Essay. 



70 THE APPROPRIATION OP 

Even without the knowledge of this fact, or wilfully ig- 
norant of it, what was the scornful rejection of all evidence 
of miracles on such a principle but the phrensied attempt to 
measure the power of God, who had created the heavens 
and the earth, and whose goings forth have been of old from 
everlasting, by the experience of man, who stands on a speck 
in space, and whose vision can embrace but a mere point in 
eternity \ But what can scoffers any longer say, when, look- 
ing singly to their favourite hypothesis, the earth on which 
they tread does tell them that, were it true, or had the laws 
of nature, as they existed after the beginning of the crea- 
tion, been established to this day by " uniform and unaltera- 
ble experience," the world would have been but a waste of 
waters, or at best but a tenement for beasts 1 And seeing 
that the Great Creator crowned his works on earth by the 
creation of man, and placed him in a world prepared for his 
reception, why might he not, for the salvation of man, give 
proof of his Divine interposition in an after age by some 
changes in that order of nature which for man's sake he had 
established 1 ? Seeing that the most astonishing miracle re- 
corded in Scripture (a mystery till of late not otherwise un- 
folded) is a certain fact, it is not because of any infringement 
of the laws of nature that all the rest may not be proved to 
be true. Seeing that the order of nature was altered by the 
creation of a new thing upon the earth, what could hinder 
the same effecting power from altering at any time the things 
that are made, or from giving unto man, as a rational being, 
some proof of the interposition of his hand 1 Surely making 
the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, the blind to see, feeding 
of thousands with a few loaves and fishes, staying a tempest 
with a word, raising the dead to life, and calling the buried 
from the tomb, and all scriptural miracles combined, are no 
more to be disbelieved from the very nature of the facts, 
than that, in the midst of a fair and faultless creation, the hu- 
man form was at first fashioned from the dust, and sight 
given to the eye, hearing to the ear, strength to the limbs, 
life to the whole frame, and a spirit put in man by the inspi- 
ration of the Almighty. The raising of a man from the dead 
is not more contrary to the order of nature, as subsisting 
now, than the creation of man was contrary to the order of 
nature which subsisted then, when a human being never had 
been seen. Recalling life to the body it had left is not more 
marvellous than giving life to that which before had none. 
And as so great a miracle was the origin of our race, it be- 
comes not mortal man,- nor is it a right exercise of his reason, 
to say unto the Almighty, what dost thou 1 nor does it be- 
come the thing formed to say to him that formed it, there 
are laws which thou canst not alter. The resuscitation of 
an organized frame is not less credible than the original for 



Hume's argument* tl 

mation of the first animated body. And since the latter is 
an admitted fact>, though an infringement of an order pre- 
viously established, the other may be effected by the same 
cause, whatever the general law of nature may be ; since the 
one is indisputable, the other is not impossible. It shows 
not, therefore, perfect sanity of mind, nor is it a principle 
that will ever be established by reason, that a miracle is in- 
credible from the very nature of the fact ; nor is it in reason, 
but in order to escape from its verdict, that men would ever 
be debarred from inquiring whether there be not full proof 
of the events recorded in Scripture, as the earth itself bears 
witness to one of the most astonishing of the miracles which 
it records. 

The girdle which the seer of Israel hid in the earth till it 
was profitable for nothing, was yet a sign to the House of 
Israel, more eloquent than the voice of the prophet, of which 
the significancy has not yet passed away. And the great 
argument which modern skepticism has discovered, though 
marred in like manner, and utterly unprofitable for its des- 
tined purpose, is reserved for a higher and better object, of 
which it was not in the hearts of its authors and abettors to 
think, and, without any design or desire of theirs, it will truly 
be useful as long as the world lasts. Their scoffing, their 
argument, its answer and its use, are all against them ; and 
may well rank in the fore front of Christian evidence. The 
scoffers themselves and their saying are not only visible 
and audible evidences of the truth of Scripture ; not only 
does the whole of their argument rest on a fiction, but, as 
it is from the general and established regularity of the course 
of nature that the absolute inviolabilty of its laws was un- 
warrantably assumed or illogically inferred, the very fact, 
which alone gave all its plausibility to that dogma of the 
scoffers, by which, in their estimation, all belief in miracles 
was to be for ever discarded by all men of sense, is precisely 
the principle on which miracles give full proof to all who 
will exercise their reason, and proportion, as wise men, 
11 their belief to the evidence, 11 that the doctrine, in confirma- 
tion of which they were wrought, is indeed of God. The 
laws of nature are not absolutely inviolable. But nature 
assuredly has its laws or an order w r hich has been impressed 
upon it all ; and therefore a violation of that order is His 
work. And a miracle, if true, from the very nature of the 
fact, proves that the doctrine is of God, and is his own seal 
to his word. 

At all hazards, and in avowed rejection of all evidence, an 
inveterate hostility, from first to last, has been manifested 
against the holy religion of Jesus. And in striking demon- 
stration of the deceitfulness of sin in hardening the heart in 
unbelief, the testimony which God has given of his Son has 



72 THE APPROPRIATION AND USE OF 

been discredited on allegations diametrically opposite and 
mutually subversive of each other. Skeptics, in these times, 
have scoffed at miracles because of their knowledge of the 
regularity of all the operations of nature ; while from ig- 
norance of such regularity throughout creation, unbelievers 
in early ages admitted the truth of the miracles, but rejected 
the doctrine. The ignorant pagan believed not, because he 
saw not the extent of the laws of nature ; the sager philoso- 
pher does not believe, because he recognises the universality 
of these laws, and holds that they are absolutely inviolable. 
Of the latter assertion we have seen the fallacy ; and in the 
present day it will not be urged anew that a miraculous event 
might be the sport of an inferior Deity, or take its rise from 
the agency of a demon or the power of magic. The true 
knowledge of the works of God rescues the mind that will 
be rescued, both from an indiscriminate perception of truth 
and error, and from a skepticism impervious to reason. In- 
stead of every rare phenomenon being accounted miracu- 
lous, or of miracles being held as wholly incredible, we need 
but to see, on the one hand, how regular laws predominate 
over the world, and, on the other, that, however uniform 
they be, they have been and may be altered, in order to know 
in either case that a miracle is the index of Divine power. 
Instead, therefore, of the regularity of the laws of nature 
sanctioning an utter incredulity of miracles, it is because of 
that very regularity that these give evidence of a commis- 
sion from on high. Were it not that all things are regulated 
by fixed and general laws, and that a uniform experience, as 
observable by man, has established these laws, there could 
be no violation or contravention of an order that did not 
subsist, and no event could be deemed miraculous. Were 
there not an order in nature, it would have no laws to be 
violated ; or were they to be suspended daily or by human 
means, they would cease to be laws. It is because the 
heavens and the earth stand as God hath established them of 
old, that they clearly show forth his eternal power and god- 
head. And it is also because there is an established order 
throughout his works, that its infringement gives direct mani- 
festation of supernatural power. That which, in any in- 
stance, controls the laws of nature, is above them. He who 
hath ordained them can alone suspend them. And to see 
that they have been violated in any manner is to see that 
the hand of the Lord has done it. Perfectly and absolutely 
unalterable, except by omnipotence alone, they can be sus- 
pended or changed only by Him who ordained them ; who 
changed the once settled course of things, and who may 
change it again wmenever or in whatever way seemeth 
meet to that infinite wisdom which all his works display. 
Any alteration of these laws, whether the power which ef- 



hume's argument. 73 

fects it be immediate, delegated, or permitted, must emanate 
from the Lord alone ; and, as being an illustration of his pow- 
er, becomes also a credential of his will. It is thus that 
miracles, truly such, confirm the truth of Revelation. And 
the averment that there is universal experience against the 
proof of a miracle, or the saying of scoffers that all things 
have continued as they were at the beginning of the crea- 
tion, is founded on the fact that all nature is regulated by 
fixed laws, without which there could not be a miracle, and 
in consequence of which miracles, being proveable, give at- 
testation, for that identical reason, that the word which they 
were wrought to confirm is the word of the living God. 

It is an easy riddance of a holy faith to say that " the 
Christian religion cannot be believed by any reasonable per- 
son without a miracle ;" and that " the proof against a mira- 
cle is as entire as any argument from experience can possi- 
bly be imagined." Such reasoning, when unveiled, shows 
an undisguised resolution not to believe. But the human 
mind, even in its delusions, needs some semblance of reason 
on which to rest, though void of all substance, and incompe- 
tent to save as a " shadow on the waters." 

The perverse and fatal ingenuity of unreasonable men has 
rendered such a tedious disquisition needful to show — what 
cannot be denied but on principles subversive of all religion, 
and tending directly to atheism — that miracles admit of proof 
and give evidence of inspiration. The free inquiry of modern 
times, which stifles evidence and scoffs at proof, has nothing 
akin to the philosophic spirit of ancient Greece. Men there 
were, and Socrates and Plato were among them, who ended 
their lives in the hope of immortality, and crowned their la- 
bours in the pursuit of knowledge with the frank confession 
that it behooved mortals to wait till that which reason could 
but darkly know or faintly discover would be clearly re- 
vealed by some Divine person, who, for that end, should vis- 
it the world. Many wise men did desire to see the things 
which we see and did not see them, and to hear the things 
which we hear, but did not hear them. They sought for 
some light in the midst of darkness, and hoped for more than 
they could find. And if they were philosophers — lovers of 
wisdom, worthy of the name which originated with them — 
who can pervert or profane philosophy more than do those 
who, in the midst of light, seek for darkness ; who, on a false 
assumption, and vain imagination, and in wilful ignorance, 
" put in a general demurrer" against all inquiry and proof, as 
authoritative as any that ever issued from the Vatican, and 
who exert all their mental energy to disprove the possibility 
of revelation 1 It is not the mantle of Plato which has fallen 
on them. And it is another spirit than his of which they 
have a double portion. The treatment experienced by the 

G 



74 THE APPROPRIATION AND USE OF 

gospel from those of the sect of the Epicureans is not a 
novelty, but, on the rule of like effects following like causes, 
has long been established by uniform experience. And the 
world has never been without a proof that there may be " an 
end of common sense," from the hatred of holiness as well as 
from " the love of wonder." 

The acquisition of truth is the object of religion as well 
as of science ; and whatsoever is subversive of it is preju- 
dicial alike to them both. It is an ill omen of the soundness 
of either to shrink from the freest inquiry or the fullest in- 
vestigation. " Come and let us reason together," is the lan- 
guage of Divine truth. We will not listen to reason nor re- 
gard any proof, is not the language of genuine philosophy. 
They that are not of the day love the darkness and hate the 
light. The same authority, acting on the same evil princi- 
ple, which sent Galileo to the dungeon for asserting that 
the earth revolved round the sun, exercised a deadlier hatred 
to those who maintained that the Bible is the only rule of 
the Christian faith, and could point, in unrighteous exultation, 
to the embers around many a stake ; which have left suffi- 
cient memorials to the world that the powers of darkness 
have no less hatred of the light which hath come down from 
heaven, than of that which springs from the earth. But they 
that are of the day come unto the light. It leagues not with 
darkness ; and knowledge or the perception of truth is the 
light of the mind, before which ignorance is dispelled. It is 
the duty of the Christian to join in common cause with every 
lover of the truth, against all error and delusion. In con- 
tending for the faith, he has to wage a warfare against the 
enemies of reason on every side ; against superstitious cre- 
dulity, as well as against an irrational skepticism. No lie is 
of the truth, whether it be a false metaphysical assumption, 
like the theory of Hume, or a lying wonder, such as befits 
a popish legend. It is the business of the true believer to 
repudiate and reprobate, as hateful of itself and injurious to 
the cause of truth, as the experience of ages has shown, 
every mode of deception and every groundless motive of fear. 
These, in the hands of impostors, have not only overawed the 
human mind, and debarred it from rational inquiry, even as 
skeptics now do, but they have operated so strongly, so 
widely, and so long in promoting error and repressing truth, 
as, by an almost unnatural revulsion, to have led, whenever 
reason was unfettered, to the disbelief of everything super- 
natural, and to the easy and fatal transition from one ex- 
tremity of error to the other, or from superstition to infidel- 
ity. The eye that has long been deadened in a dungeon, on 
coming to the light, loses for a moment the right perception 
of objects, and is dazzled by the brightness beyond its pow- 
er of immediate and distinct discrimination ; and the limbs 



75 

into which manacles have worn walk not steadily so soon 
as they are unshackled, and a rash trial of their strength may 
cause the freed man to stumble at the first step. It may be 
thus with the mind as with the body ; and right reason may 
interpose, for the sake of safety, that neither the mental nor 
the natural faculties be overstrained. The dark ages must, 
perhaps, be for some time passed away, before reason, on 
the one hand, maintain its dignity, and cease to be abused 
by the love of wonder and by idle fears; and, on the other, 
before it abandon the love of experimenting with false the- 
ories, and know the true measure of its power, till it see at 
last that the cause of religion and of science is but one ; 
that of truth unmixed with error, or the genuine knowledge 
of the word and works of the God of truth. 

While maintaining that miracles are possible, most readily 
do we admit that " it is quite another question what ought 
to be the nature of the evidence to render miracles at all 
probable ; and what may be the accompanying conditions 
necessary to support a claim which, by its very nature, is 
subject to the greatest difficulties, and on which the bound- 
less fraud and folly of mankind have accumulated the great- 
est possible quantity of suspicion." Yet the implied chal- 
lenge which these words convey may be taken up in the de- 
fence of truth with unflinching confidence. 

The truth of miracles must be tried by a test which no- 
thing but miracles can abide, and which is fully competent 
to discriminate those works that are of God, a-gtl demon- 
strate the intervention of his power, from those which are 
of man, whether these be the delusions of wilful impostors, 
or originate in the reveries of misguided zealots. It is meet 
that there be a wide and clear separation and impassable 
barrier between any invention of an extravagant fancy or 
machination of a deceitful heart, between all that the art of 
man, by any possible combination or craftiness, could ever 
fabricate, the mind of man devise, the tongue of man tell, or 
the hands of man do, and the unerring counsel and holy pur- 
poses of an omniscient God, -and the miraculous work of the 
hand of the Almighty. It is meet that, if the word be of 
God, the scriptural miracles should stand a test such as 
none but God could have supplied, such as should set at de- 
fiance all the fraud of mankind — seemingly boundless though 
it be — and mock the impious pretensions of daring and de- 
ceiving mortals, who would try to mimic the works of om- 
nipotence, and say that their word was the word of God. 
It is meet that there should be the fullest security against 
the belief of false or pretended miracles, and that what the 
Lord hath wrought should be tried by a test which they never 
could abide. And here, as in all things else, true religion 
associates with true reason ; it is meet that there should 



76 THE APPROPRIATION AND USB OP 

be such a test, and it hath seemed meet unto the Lord to 
give it. 

It has hitherto been our object to show that the prophets 
of Israel were inspired, and that miracles are proveable. 
And nothing more is needful, in the first instance, to be pre- 
mised, in order that it may farther be made manifest that, 
in imparting supernatural events, God hath not left himself 
without a witness to the sons of men, not only of the possi- 
bility, but of the absolute certainty of the truth of the Chris- 
tian religion, as inevitably deducible from the plainest exer- 
cise of unbiased reason. 

" All prophecies ," as Hume asserts, " are real miracles, and 
as such only can be admitted as proofs of any revelation. 
If it did not exceed the capacity of human nature to foretel 
future events, it would be absurd to employ any prophecy as 
an argument for a divine mission or authority from Heav- 
en."* All prophecies, therefore, which are visibly true — in- 
stead of being " a subject of derision," as our scoffer, true to 
his character, affirmed — are, in his own words, " real mira- 
cles" — " proofs of revelation or authority from Heaven." 
Prophecy is a demonstration of Divine knowledge ; as mira- 
cles, in the restricted acceptation of the word, are a demon- 
stration of Divine power. Prophecies being true, revelation 
is established as a fact ; and there is thus full and decisive 
proof of revelation as there is also of a miracle. There is 
experience of the truth of both. What has been may be 
again. A^jk experience, even on this general principle, pre- 
pares the way of the Christian evidence, and demonstrates 
that neither a miracle nor an exercise of Divine power, nor 
yet revelation nor the communication of Divine knowledge, 
would be a new thing upon the earth. It might fairly be 
argued from hence, if we could only resort to plausibility, 
that it is not improbable that miracles might have been 
wrought in confirmation of more full revelation of the Divine 
will than prophecy imparts. 

Prophecy, in a multiplicity of instances, is a revelation of 
the judgments of God. But in those scriptures of which the 
inspiration is attested by existing ruins, the name of God is 
thus proclaimed : " The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and 
gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, 
keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and trans- 
gression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." 
Shadowy, preparatory, and avowedly temporary as was the 
Mosaic dispensation, yet its record bears frequent testimony 
to the everlasting mercy as well as to the perfect holiness of 
the God of Israel. God, it is written, hath no pleasure in 
the death of a sinner, but rather that he should repent and 
live. Mercy rejoiceth over judgment. And a more benig- 

* Hume's Essay on Miracles, 



HUME S ARGUMENT. 77 

nant but not less divine commission was given to the proph- 
ets, than that of predicting the punishment of nations and 
the devastation of kingdoms. True it is that they revealed 
the greatest desolations that have come upon the earth, and 
described with minutest accuracy the issue of the unrepented 
iniquity of every people, whose criminality in the sight of 
Heaven they described, and whose doom they denounced. 
And, our enemies being witnesses, the once fairest portions 
of the globe bear the exact and defined impress, in a mani- 
fold variety of forms, of every mark with which the proph- 
ets of Israel stamped their destiny. The coming to pass of 
the things which they foretold shows that they were men 
by whom God hath indeed spoken; and they are constituted 
thus, in the verdict of right reason, the servants and the 
prophets of the living and omniscient God, who ruleth over 
all, and who executeth judgment and justice in the earth. 
Yet the brand of the Divine judgments which it was given 
unto them to bear is but the badge of their inspiration, the 
seal of their great and chief office, and their warrant for 
bearing, before all nations and to all ages, the testimony 
which, by them, God has given of his Son. In accrediting 
their Divine commission, and in giving ocular demonstration 
of the truth of their word, every fulfilled prediction thus tes- 
tifies of those who testified of Jesus. The witness which 
they bear to him is more than man could have given, and 
such as never could pertain to any religious system of mere 
human origin. At sundry times and in divers manners they 
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost ; and the same 
spirit of truth which revealed to them in distant ages the 
most momentous facts pertaining to the history of the world, 
such as were then unheard of, but are now obvious to the 
sight of all men, also made known to them the purpose of 
God, and his promise to the fathers concerning the " Mes- 
siah" and the new and everlasting covenant, foretold by 
prophets as well as confirmed by miracles, which he was to 
establish with the sons of men. The inspiration of the 
prophets once proved — even as skeptics have substantiated 
the proof beyond denial — they stand forth before the world 
not only as having been the faithful heralds of judgments 
that have fallen on the nations, but, now that the effect of 
every vision has been seen, they have a right to be heard, 
and, in all reason, to be believed, by all who, seeing, will see, 
or hearing, will hear — as heralds of the gospel of peace, and 
witnesses for God concerning the work of redemption — even 
as assuredly as they have been in the awards of his judg- 
ments on the earth. If, indeed, they testify of Jesus, they 
give a warrant for believing in his miracles and in his word, 
which ow T es not its origin to mere human testimony ; and 
they give a peculiar sanction to that testimony, such as could 

G2 



78 THE APPROPRIATION AND USE OF 

not have come from uninspired lips. If the words of mar- 
tyrs need confirmation in an unbelieving world, it surely 
may be given by the voice of prophets. Did men, who could 
not have spoken as they did speak save only by the Spirit 
of God, testify of Jesus, then, were it even true that mere 
human testimony, if it stood alone, would be incapable of 
proving a miracle, such a task is not, in fact, exacted of it ; 
it does not stand alone, but, though it were the highest that 
men could impart, other testimony more than human, which 
no sophistry can shake, is conjoined with it ; testimony in 
guaranty of the gospel of Jesus, even that of the word of 
God by his prophets, which must ever baffle all human power 
to invalidate or overthrow, even as it infinitely surpassed all 
human ingenuity to have invented or conceived. And thus 
at once a line of demarcation, such as no mortal hand could 
have traced, may be drawn between all pretended miracles, 
in support of any cunningly-devised fable, though wrought 
with all deceivableness of unrighteousness, and the works 
of Him who came to do the will of the Father, and to finish 
his work. And looking to the word of God by the prophets, 
seeing that he hath spoken by them, it may rightly be asked, 
before faith be yielded to the testimony of man, What saith 
the scripture 1 

That the prophets did testify of Jesus is another and dis- 
tinct portion of the Christian evidence, afterward to be 
touched on. The fact, as attested both by heathen and Jew- 
ish authors, that, from the writings of the ancient priests or 
prophets, the expectation of the coming of a great Deliverer, 
who, arising from Judea, was to triumph over the nations — ■ 
was not only prevalent, but universal over the whole East at 
the very time of the commencement of the Christian era — 
if it be not enough to stagger the boldest skepticism, is 
enough to show that the presumed connexion between the 
prophecies of the Old Testament and the events recorded in 
the New is not a mere gratuitous assumption, but demands, 
in its proper place, the closest attention and the most candid 
scrutiny or search on the part of all who seek to found their 
convictions on reason, and who are not so devoid of all ra- 
tionality as to be careless of disowning the testimony and 
rejecting the counsel of God. 

But the prominent point — admitting not of debate — which 
has here to be specially regarded, is that the miracles of 
Christ are represented as wrought in confirmation of the 
truth that he was the Messiah, of whom all the prophets had 
testified. Prom the words of an apostle we have seen the ref- 
utation of the modern argument against miracles, or the denial 
of the saying of the scoffers of the present age. And from the 
words of Christ himself, when he was questioned concerning 
Jiis Messiahship, we learn the true connexion between proph- 



iiume's argument. 79 

ecy and miracles ; we see that the credibility of the gospel, 
in reference even to the external evidences, stands not alone 
on the testimony of man; and we hear his appeal to reason, 
his claim to be believed, his own reference to the testimony 
of the prophets as well as to the miracles which he wrought. 

In direct answer to the question, Art thou he that should 
come ] Jesus answered in the words of the prophet Isaiah, 
and appealed to his miracles in confirmation of their fulfilment. 

"And John, calling unto him two of his disciples, sent 
them to Jesus, saying, Art thou he that should come? or look 
tee for another? And in the same hour he cured many of 
their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits, and unto 
many that were blind he gave sight. And Jesus answering, 
said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye 
have seen and heard ; how that the blind see, the lame walk, 
the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to 
the poor the gospel is preached. And blessed is he whoso- 
ever shall not be offended in me." John vii., 19-23. 

Jesus, the author of the Christian faith, is explicitly rep- 
resented as directly and expressly referring to the testimony 
borne to him by the prophets, as hence founding his claim 
to be believed, and as charging those with being inconsistent 
and inexcusable who professed to believe in the prophets and 
who did not believe in him. " If," says he, in language as 
unlike to that of every impostor as were all his words and 
all his actions, " I bear witness of myself, my witness is not 
true. There is another that tteareth witness of me ; and I 
know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true. 
Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. But 
I receive not testimony from man ; but these things I say, that 
ye might be saved. But I have greater witness than that of 
John : for the works that the Father hath given me to finish, 
the same works that I do bear witness of me, that the Father 
hath sent me. And the Father himself which hath sent me 
hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice 
at any time nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word 
abiding in you : for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. 
Search the Scriptures ; for in them ye think ye have eternal 
life : and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not 
come to me that ye might have life. I receive not honour 
from men. How can ye believe, which receive honour one 
of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God 
only 1 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father : 
there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye 
trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; 
for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how 
shall ye believe my words V John v., 31-47. 

Christ did not bear witness of himself; he did not receive 
testimony from man ; nor did he receive honour from men. 



80 THE APPROPRIATION AND USE OF 

The truth of his religion has primarily to be established on 
other and surer principles than the mere isolated testimony 
of man. If men had the love of God in them, they would be- 
lieve in him who cometh from God. If they had the love of 
truth, they would believe the truth. If they sought for the 
honour that cometh from God only, his word would have been 
its own witness, and they would have believed him who came 
in his Father's name. Without here claiming faith in the tes- 
timony borne by Scripture concerning the heart of man- 
though the words are those of a prophet who described the is- 
sue of national iniquities, as he laid bare the source of all sin in 
the human breast — it may not be altogether irrational to ex- 
press a doubt whether the history of our race gives strong dem- 
onstration that the love of holiness has there its seat, and that 
moral and spiritual truth, without any repelling power from 
within, finds always in the heart of man an open entrance and 
ready reception. Such, at least, was not the testimony of Je- 
sus, who, it is said, knew what was in man. And he proffered 
not his faith to mortals, as Mohammed did, on the simple alle- 
gation that it was from God, or with the command to believe, 
without any reason assigned, without any evidence given. 
Nor does he appeal to the testimony of man, exclusive of 
the witness of God. His claim was that of being the Mes- 
siah, of whom the Scriptures testified; of whom the Father 
had borne witness by the mouth of his prophets, and who 
spake not of themselves, but whose voice proclaimed, as the 
truth of their word hath proved, thus saith the Lord. It was 
to establish the truth that he was the predicted Messiah that 
all his miracles were wrought. And his allegation was not 
that he, but that Moses, in whom they trusted, accused the 
unbelieving Jews unto the Father ; that faith in Moses was 
identified with faith in him ; that to believe in the prophets 
was to believe in him ; and that it was want of faith in the 
writings of Moses which had a disqualifying efficacy in t'heir 
disbelief of his words. And such and so close is the alleged 
connexion between belief in Jesus and belief in the prophets, 
that it is recorded that he said unto two of his disciples as 
they communed and reasoned after his resurrection, " O 
fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have 
spoken. And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he ex- 
pounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concern- 
ing himself."* 

The credibility of the Christian faith avowedly rested from 
the first on the testimony of the prophets, conjoined with the 
evidence of the facts. We read in the second chapter of 
the Acts of the Apostles, that so soon as they were endowed 
with power from on high, and opened their mouths to preach 

* Lu^e xxiv., 25, 27. 



HUME S ARGUMENT. 81 

the gospel, they made their first appeal to a prophecy ; and 
that from hence the theme of their first discourse was the 
proof from other prophecies that that same Jesus who had 
been crucified, being- delivered by the determinate ivisdom and 
foreknowledge of God, as revealed in the scriptures, was both 
Lord and Christ, or the predicted Messiah.* And, as the 
record in the next chapter bears, no sooner was their first 
miracle wrought than they declared, " The God of Abraham, 
and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath mag- 
nified his Son Jesus ; and those things which God before had 
showed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should 
suffer, he hath so fulfilled."! And it is the recorded declara- 
tion of Paul, that he witnessed "both to small and great, 
saying none other things than those which the prophets and 
Moses did say should come."| 

In entering, then, on a more direct inquiry into the truth 
of the Christian faith, we appeal not alone to the testimony of 
man, nor look on that as the primary warranty of our creed. 
We ask not, as the charter of a heavenly hope, for the re- 
corded testimony of men who lived eighteen centuries ago, 
in order to show from thence that a Divine Being, unheard of 
before, visited the earth in human form, and taught a new 
doctrine, of the nature and of the truth of which their record 
is the only voucher ; and wrought miracles in its confirma- 
tion, of which their word is the only witness. If the doc- 
trine of such imagined teachers were farther supposed to be 
holy, and if it be true that man is a sinner, assuredly their 
report would not be believed. But it is not thus that the cre- 
dentials of Christianity are presented to the world, without 
corroborative proof, worthy alike of all acceptation on the 
part of man, and of a revelation from Heaven. For there is 
a record, substantiated in every age by a higher and more in- 
fallible testimony than that of man, which bears on its fron- 
tispiece not only the indelible, but the bright and ever-bright- 
ening, stamp of inspiration. And with that in his hand, and 
open to the view of all men, and in a language that none can 
misunderstand, every advocate of the Christian faith may, in 
the words of a Jew of old unto a Gentile, ask of any man 
who has ears to hear or eyes to see, Believest thou the 
Prophets ? 

Their line, it may well be said, hath gone throughout all 
the earth, and their word to the world's end. The world 
hath felt its power, and every past convulsion attests its 
truth, as every coming change must finally give new mani- 
festations of its unchangeableness. And the proof of the in- 
spiration of the prophets being thus visibly set before all 
men, the same question comes home as closely to all as to 

* Acts ii , 17, 23-36. f Ibid, in., 12-18. J Ibid, xxvi., 22, 



82 THE APPROPRIATION AND tJSE OP 

the Jews on the first promulgation of the Christian faith, 
Believest thou the Prophets ? 

Let this question be answered— as the enemies of the gos- 
pel have taught all to answer it — and nothing more is needed 
to prove that the witnesses of Jesus are entitled to a hearing 
in the court of reason. Their testimony, then, bears a new 
and a different character from what any testimony of man 
could otherwise have borne. And in contending for the truth 
of the gospel, the controversy is then the same with all men 
in every nation under heaven, whether Jesus be the Christ 
of whom the prophets testified. That is the doctrine of the 
New Testament to which the witnesses of Jesus bear their 
testimony. It is not of an unknown or unexpected Messiah 
that they speak, but professedly of Him of whom all the 
prophets before them since the world began had testified. 
This is the true light in which their testimony has to be 
viewed, the immoveable position which it maintains. 

If the wisest of the heathens could have expressed a hope 
that a Divine Being would visit the earth to enlighten the 
spiritual darkness of man, which they were wise enough to 
discern and to feel, was not the sure word of prophecy, con- 
firmed as such, competent to show that such a Saviour would 
appear? And if it did bear witness of Jesus and his gospel, 
is there not then the strongest presumptive proof, antece- 
dent to human testimony, that such a Saviour would appear, 
and that such a religion would be promulgated in the world 1 
And even on the supposed truth of the averment of the first 
of those scoffers in these latter times — who have urged the 
argument against miracles, the fallacy of which may thus be 
detected, and the use of which may thus be appropriated and 
applied — that " it is experience only which gives authority to 
human testimony," does not the experience of the truth of 
prophecy, than which nothing could be more evidently mi- 
raculous, give authority to human testimony, if otherwise 
complete and unimpeachable, when it relates those things 
which prophets had revealed 1 However incredible it might 
otherwise have been deemed, yet when it goes but to show 
how the testimony of God concerning Jesus was fulfilled, it 
becomes of all things the most credible, and, in the words of 
our adversary, " no room is left for any contrary supposition," 
established as the truth of prophecy is by " a uniform and 
unalterable experience." 

After affirming that all prophecies are real miracles, Hume, 
upon the whole, concludes that " the Christian religion even 
at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person 
without a miracle. Mere reason is insufficient to convince 
us of its veracity : and whoever is moved by faith to assent 
to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, 
which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and 



HUME'S ARGUMENT. 83 

gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary 
to custom and experience."* 

It is not a miracle that those scoffers in the last days do not 
" believe the Christian religion," whom " reason is insufficient 
to convince of its veracity !" If not thus irrationally hard- 
ened against conviction, men would be moved to assent to it 
by every evidence of its truth. But that man surely " sub- 
verts the principles of his understanding" who argues against 
facts, of which he is willingly ignorant. It is not without a 
reason of our faith that a hundred and forty prophecies — 
all of which, literally true even at this day, are real miracles — 
form the basis of a demonstration of its veracity. All of 
these bear (as previously shown in the Evidence of Proph- 
ec yt) against the argument of Hume. But one prophecy 
alone from the New Testament is not " insufficient" to 
transform the subtlest arguer against the Christian miracles, 
and each sage in his train — by his own predicted character 
and argument, even at this day or in the last days — into " a 
continued miracle in his own person," which may be suffi- 
cient to subvert all the fallacies of a vain imagination, and 
give every wise man a determination to say, My soul, enter 
not thou into their counsel ; rush not with a reed against the 
thick bosses of the buckler of the Almighty ; for although there 
may, as thus seen, be strong delusion to disbelieve the 
Christian religion and to believe a lie, there is demonstration 
to believe, as invariably accordant with experience, in that 
word which never faileth, and which is indeed of everlast- 
ing use. 



CHAPTER m. 

ON THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
SCRIPTURES. 

On comparing a portion of a single chapter of the Book of 
Daniel with the various histories of the successive kings of 
Syria and Egypt, Porphyry, an ancient enemy of the gospel, 
could not otherwise escape from the conclusion that the rec- 
ord was inspired, than by alleging that it must have been 
written subsequently to the events. Unaccustomed to the 
precision of Scriptural predictions, and versant only in the 
ambiguous responses of the Pythian oracle, he adduced the 

* Conclusion of Hume's Essay on Miracles, 
f P. 359-370. 



84 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

extreme definiteness and accuracy of the description as a 
substantial proof, in his estimation, that it could only have 
been drawn from the actual historical facts which it so tersely 
concentrated and so truly defined. No such alternative is 
now left for the skeptic who would deny the inspiration of 
the prophets of Israel. For in the gradual development of 
prophetic truth, which shows how all ages are at once open 
to the view of the Eternal, even as his eyes behold all na- 
tions, there stands in mere human view so long an interval, 
embracing so many generations of our race, from the time 
that the visions were seen by the prophets till each separate 
word has had its perfect work, or from the beginning, when 
it was declared, to the end as now seen .by the naked eye, 
that every such cavil is at last silenced; and it is alike be- 
yond all question, that no historian ever wrote with more ac- 
curacy than the prophets, and that their writings long prece- 
ded those events, which, in these latter times, proclaim their 
inspiration to the world. 

In entering, then, on the subject of the antiquity and au- 
thenticity of the books of the Old Testament, we have not 
to take them up and to try their genuineness, as if they were 
records newly discovered among ruins of which we had no 
antecedent knowledge, and on which no other writing was 
legible than that which the hand of man could have formed. 
But, whatever record as to other things they may bear, this 
at least is certain, that prophecy is ingrained throughout the 
whole, and that they a re the charters which God has chosen 
as testimonials to all men of his omniscience. If the word 
of those men, who spoke with undeviating truth of things 
infinitely surpassing all human foresight, should yet be found 
in fault, testifying of falsehoods while they spake of things 
plainly cognizable by their senses ; and if the truth of God 
should thus be found to be commingled in the same page with 
the lies of men, it may of a verity be said that the human un- 
derstanding never solved such a problem nor disentangled 
itself from such a dilemma as to account for the seeming 
sanction that Heaven itself would thus have given to a rec- 
ord founded on fable and tarnished with lies. It is scarcely 
the sagest of creeds, that they who are found faithful in 
having written in a book what man of himself could havo 
never known, thereby lose the credibility attached to common 
witnesses, in testifying that which they saw or which they 
did : or that their testimony should sink below that of all 
other men, and their record below that of ordinary and falli- 
ble historians, in proportion as God has exalted them as his 
witnesses, and marked them out, from among all that had 
been born of woman, as the men who spake by inspiration 
of his Spirit. Were such monstrous absurdities to be urged 
with all the semblance of profound reasoning and all the 



OP THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 85 

solemnity of oracular wisdom, they would only befool the 
name of philosophy. 

Appealing, on the other hand, to the plain understanding 
and unbiased and unbewildered judgment of every rational 
inquirer after truth, may it not, in ingenuous reason, be asked 
whether the faithfulness of the prophetic record does not give 
some warrant for trusting in the historical narrative, seeing 
that both have been penned by the same hands 1 Abstract- 
edly from all other considerations, the testimony of a man 
who relates a miraculous event may be held extremely 
questionable, and is only to be credited after scrutinizing in- 
quiry, and on independent testimony corroborative of its 
truth. But when it is demonstrated by existing and undeni- 
able facts that men were inspired of God to declare his will 
and foretel his judgments, it seems difficult, if not impossible, 
to conceive what other claim could be so strong for putting 
faith in the testimony which they bear to events that are in- 
timately connected with the gradual rise and development 
of the same everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and 
sure, of which the fulfilment of geographical and historical 
predictions forms but a testimonial and subsidiary part. 

That a foot should show that the statue was a Hercules, 
was an ancient proverb. And in the science of comparative 
anatomy, such is the mutual adaptation of part to part, the 
regularity, order, harmony, and wisdom which the structure 
of every creature of God displays, that the form and due 
proportions of any animal may be, and have been, discovered 
and defined, according to the fairest deductions of reason, 
from the fossil remains of a limb or even the portion of a 
single bone. In like manner, or much rather, we may at 
once deduce from a demonstrated inspiration — the proof of 
the reality and genuineness of which has come into our hands 
and is open to our sight — that this manifest portion of Divine 
truth has also its relative parts and its due proportions, the 
existence of which may as reasonably be inferred from 
thence as that of a body from a limb. 

There is a direct and immediate, as well as avowed con- 
nexion between the Old Testament history and the prophe- 
cies which are written in the book of the Lord. Not only 
were both, in a great measure, written by the same persons, 
and often intermingled or associated in the same page, but 
future things were drawn and declared from their relation 
to things then present, and prophecy may be said to have 
sprung up from the history, and to have been ingrafted on it 
as on a root. And while the end was declared from the be- 
ginning, whether in reference to the successive empires of 
the world or the specific fate of cities, countries, and king- 
doms, the subject was, in continuation, one and the same. 
Egypt, Judea. Babylon. Tyre, Philistia, Ammon, Moab, and 

II 



86 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

Edom are the scenes of those transactions which Scripture 
records ; and these are also the local fields which prophecy 
has marked out as its own peculiar province. It was the 
ancient intercourse between the Israelites and the people of 
these cities and nations which led to the denunciations of 
the prophets. They looked, in supernatural vision, from the 
beginning to the end, as now we see it ; and assuredly we 
may now look back from the end to the beginning with 
some presumptive trust in their word, in reading their joint 
narration of those facts from which their sure word of proph- 
ecy originated. The primary history recorded by Moses and 
the prophets thus bears a sanction, if not a seal, such as no 
other historian ever pretended or dared, or, without braving 
the sure reproach of being a false prophet, could have at- 
tempted to claim ; and that sanction, without a parallel, can 
never cease while the visible prophetic result, which is 
coupled with the Scriptural narrative, exhibits the strictest 
conformity to the words of the sacred penmen, and carries 
on from age to age that history which, as such, Moses and 
the prophets began. 

Prophecy fulfilled is the continuation of Scriptural history. 
And is it not infinitely more likely that a succession of men 
should have handed down the connected history of their 
own people and country from generation to generation, and 
executed the task of faithful historians, than that they should, 
in an age so far remote from their own times, be unques- 
tionably approved as true prophets, whose words never de- 
viated from the facts in foretelling those events that have 
happened in all intervening ages, and those also which are 
now to be seen? Sober reason, in such a case, would be 
slow in deciding that skepticism savours of wisdom. 

Nay, in reference to the credibility of the miraculous facts 
recorded in the Old Testament, even when viewed apart from 
their peculiar evidence, afterward to be considered, a miracle 
of power is only set, in perfect conformity, beside a miracle 
of knowledge. The Divine legation of Moses, for instance, 
is as clearly proved at this hour, by actual, visible, and un- 
deniable execution of the judgments which he denounced 
against the Jews and against their land, if they would not 
listen to the voice of the Lord nor obey his ordinances and 
his statutes to observe and do them, as it could have been 
at the time by all the recorded miracles in the land of Egypt, 
and by all the thunderings, and lightnings, and the flames, 
and the shaking of Sinai. The execution of the law shows 
the authority of the law, and that the lawgiver had his com- 
mission from on high. The warnings, the threatenings, and 
the punishments denounced against trangression, which were 
set before the Israelites, were, as the event has proved, the 
infallible word of God ; and any other record than that which 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCR PTURES. 87 

declares the Divine origin of the Mosaic dispensation would 
be belied by the whole prophetic and actual history of Israel, 
and the fate of the Jews in every age and in every country 
under heaven. The miracles which Moses wrought were 
but the counterpart of the prophecies which he delivered. 
The former were the work, as the latter were the word of 
God; and the man who was the organ of communicating 
the one, could as well be made the instrument of executing 
the other. The separate parts of a system professedly, and, 
in one respect at least, demonstrably Divine, are thus only 
adapted to each other. And instead of any incongruity to 
shock belief, the fact of inspiration or of Divine interposition 
being once admitted, there is — when needful alike in either 
case, for the confirmation or execution of the same Divine 
plan, and for separating things Divine from all that is merely 
human — the analogy and the harmony of miracle with mira- 
cle, guarantied by experience, integrated into one system, 
and confirmatory of the same word of God. And, while 
miracles are recorded in the Old Testament, it has, at least, 
to be borne in mind that prophets, whose words as such are 
true, were the historians ; and thus far their testimony may 
rightly be as much distinguished from that of other men, as 
the events of which they testify, in any case, are different 
from those which form the common history of our race, not 
of one peculiar people, and are recorded by ordinary and un- 
inspired historians. They who assuredly revealed what the 
Lord did say, by whom the Spirit of the Lord spake, and his 
word was in their tongue, have a right to be heard in record- 
ing what the Lord had done. And standing forth thus as the 
accredited witnesses of God, there is as little wisdom as safe- 
ty in refusing them a hearing, or in denying, without inves- 
tigation, that their Heaven-appointed commission extended 
to the history which they wrote, as well as to the prophecies 
with which that history is interwoven. 

But, even in a preliminary view, not only does the existing 
fulfilment of prophecy reflect back the light of Divine truth 
upon the history re-corded in the Old Testament, but the peo- 
ple — bearing every mark of the prophetic truth of their scrip- 
tures ; preserving them age after age with a scrupulosity and 
carefulness such as never was bestowed on any other book, 
and looks as if the very letters were their idols ; and observ- 
ing, in general, the ritual of their law, so far as they faintly 
can in any other lands than Judea — continue to this day the 
broken and scattered remnant of Jacob ; and while, in regard 
to the future, they are still " the prisoners of hope," spread 
throughout the world and numbered by millions, they are also 
the memorials of the past, neither the like nor any semblance 
of which is anywhere to be found as pertaining to any of the 
greatest kingdoms on earth, which are but as things of yes- 
terday compared to the Kingdom of Israel. 



88 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

A nation having reached its zenith, men, in haughty self- 
complacency, are prone to reckon on the stability of human 
things, and to judge both of the past and of the future by the 
present. But it would need only a little scrutiny to show- 
that, while the hosts of Israel went forth to conquer, the bar- 
barian inhabitants of central and northern Europe, clad in 
skins, had their warfare with the wolves ; and that the Temple 
of Solomon was garnished with precious stones and overlaid 
with pure gold long before the palace of Romulus was covered 
with rushes. 

On examining the authenticity of the records and history 
of the Hebrew race, the question is, did God deal with them 
in ancient as in modern times, even as he hath not dealt with 
any nation ? or were they a people set apart from the nations 
then as they are now? The judgments denounced against 
other kingdoms have been realized in their destruction or an- 
"* nihilation. But though the Jews have been cast away, and 
have not been numbered among the nations, they have not been 
cast off for ever. And as we see them, their covenant broken, 
their privileges forfeited, and themelves scattered among all na- 
tions, bearing their judicial sentence from age to age; and their 
very land, according to the same sure ivord of prophecy, lying 
desolate for many generations ; may we not from hence look 
back to the time which preceded their dispersion, ere their cit- 
ies were laid waste, and before their judgments fell thus heav- 
ily upon them, and when they were a people (as even the pro- 
phetic Scriptures declare) not cast off, but chosen ; a people 
whom the Lord chose for his own, and called himself by the 
name of the God of Israel ] and would it not, in such a case, 
be an impeachment alike of his power and of his goodness, 
and little else than atheistical, to deny that the mercy of God 
may then have been as wonderful, while his covenant with 
them did stand, as his declared judgments visibly have been, 
because they have transgressed the law, rejected the Mes- 
siah, and broken the everlasting covenant] 

In the same page in which we read of the curses that should 
come upon them and overtake them, and be accumulated, be- 
cause of multiplied transgressions and impenitence, with sev- 
en-fold severity age after age upon their race, till they should 
become what for ages they have been ; we first read of all the 
blessings that were promised if they would hearken to the 
voice of the Lord, and how he would establish them as a peo- 
ple unto himself. And the experience of eighteen hundred 
years, especially as confirming unto the letter the denuncia- 
tions of the prophets, may well pronounce it irrational to 
expect a commonplace history in that of Israel. 

It must at least be universally -admitted — except the eyes 
of skeptics be literally closed, and their ears deaf to all tes- 
timony—that the Jews do exist, and that their history, if gen- 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 89 

ttine, must, in some respects, like themselves, be peculiar. 
And with the facts and evidence before us of the inspiration 
of their ancient prophets ; of the experience and credibility 
of miracles ; of the relative connexion between those events 
which were told, now literally true, and those which are re- 
corded in the Hebrew Scriptures; and of the continued ex- 
istence of the Jews, and the peculiarity in past and present 
times of their fate, according to the prophecies which of old 
declared it ; the way being thus cleared of any debarring 
dogmatism, and open to a right apprehension of the true na- 
ture of the subject, we may come more closely to the strict 
investigation of the antiquity and authenticity of the Old Tes- 
tament Scriptures, and see whether these be not as clearly 
and completely borne out, by such evidence as the case ad- 
mits of or requires, even as the inspiration of a portion of 
these very Scriptures is infallibly demonstrated by positive, 
palpable, and existing facts. 

That the Jews were for many ages the inhabitants of Ju- 
dea, before their dispersion by the Romans, is a fact uni- 
formly attested or acknowledged by history, and is admitted 
as beyond dispute.* All question respecting the high an- 
tiquity of their Scriptures is as completely set at rest by the 
undeniable fact that they were translated into Greek more 
than two centuries and a half before the Christian era, during 
the reign and by the order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of 

* The very lowest date to which their acknowledged existence as a peo- 
ple has ever been even pretended to be brought down, so far as the writer 
has read or heard, is the era of their captivity in Babylon. For, in the 
manifestation that no opinion can be so absurd as not to find some advo- 
cate, he once heard a notorious infidel dogmatically maintain that " there 
is no evidence of the existence of the Jews on earth previous to the Baby- 
lonish captivity, and that it is not therefore to be believed by wise men." 
It is, perhaps, somewhat strange, on so sage a supposition, that such hap- 
less visitants, lighting on our inhospitable world from the clouds, the air, 
the moon, or the planets, or some unknown region in the void of space, 
should at once, having had no previous existence on earth, have found 
themselves ensconced as captives within the walls of Babylon. How or 
from whence they were taken must be left for those " wise men" to deter- 
mine who can draw theories from the air, and have a right, by special li- 
cense and tried qualifications, to recognise at a glance the quondam inmates 
of the moon. But the humble inquirer after truths to be believed, not 
doubting of the existence of a peop^ previous to their captivity, in tracing 
them from some region on earth, is inclined to think that they may possibly 
have come from that very country to which, on the expiry of their captivity, 
they returned, with authority to repossess it and to build their temple, Ju- 
dea, their fatherland, called by their name, and claimed as their own, their 
absence from which they had long pathetically bewailed, and to which they 
turned, as their descendants still do, whenever they pray unto the God of 
their fathers ; a land, it may be added, to which their race still look, in 
fond hope of a " second" and last return, not after a captivity of seventy 
years within the walls of a single city, but after a dispersion for more than 
seventeen centuries throughout all the nations of the earth. 

H2 



90 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

Egypt, and hence became a public document in a national li- 
brary — the first in the world. 

Never was any book handed down with more fidelity, or 
preserved with greater care from age to age, than the Bible. 
For the space of eighteen hundred years, Christians and 
Jews, alike holding it sacred, have been its guardians. And 
each has been a witness against the possibility of its having 
been altered or corrupted by the other. Maintaining in other 
respects a mutual aversion and enmity ill becoming the pro- 
fessed disciples .either of Christ or of Moses, here only have 
they been actuated by one common sentiment, feeling, and 
purpose ; and the monk in his cell and the rabbi in his cave, 
when driven from the habitations of men, were occupied in 
the task of transcribing and comparing the same Scriptures. 
The ancient Jews held it an " inexpiable sin" to alter a let- 
ter of their sacred volume. And down to modern times the 
preservation of the integrity of the text, and their minute 
knowledge of the letter of their Scriptures, may be said to 
have been the passion and the pride of some of the Jewish 
rabbis. With a strictness the most punctilious, and a zeal 
the most persevering, it has in past ages been a practice 
among the Jews to number how often each Hebrew letter 
recurred in each and in every book, or how often in the be- 
ginning, middle, and end of a word ; and every varied mode 
was tried by which the fidelity of a manuscript could be as- 
certained.* On the discovery of the slightest error, what- 
ever the previous labour, the parchment was committed to 
the flames. A perfect copy of the Scriptures was-often the 
work of years. And many ancient manuscripts are embel- 
lished with such an elegance and nicety as may cope with 
any other works that ever were directly executed by the 
hands of men. 

But if the fact that the Old Testament Scriptures have been 
faithfully handed down from remote ages to the present day 
stood in need of any fuller illustration, that superabundant 
demonstration may be given, till every surmise against it 
must be lost in the conviction of their genuineness. For, in a 
word, it may be said that not only did the Septuagint transla- 
tion alone lay the Bible open to the world above twenty- 
one centuries ago, in the best and most perfect language 
ever spoken by man, the language of Greece, and known by 
all the learned in Rome, and warrant the identity of the 
record to the Gentiles in all future generations ; but the Bi- 
ble was also translated into Chaldee, and commented on by 
Jewish writers before the Christian era, as if purposely des- 
tined in all future times to cut short, in like manner, ail con- 
troversy concerning the sacred text between Christians and 
Jews. 

* Allen's Modem Judaism, 



OP THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 91 

Scarcely, indeed, had the Jewish Scriptures been com- 
pleted, when the Hebrew language, after the Babylonish cap- 
tivity, ceased to be the spoken language of the Jews. After 
the prophets had left unto the world direct and infallible 
means of testing their inspiration in every future age, and 
had unfolded, in prophetic vision, the fate of many king- 
doms and the history of the world from that period to the 
end of time ; and after they had also, as remains to be seen, 
fully discharged their high office of testifying of Jesus, their 
testimony was closed, the vision and prophecy were sealed 
up ; and a seal in confirmation to every future age was also 
put upon the antiquity of the record, by the almost simulta- 
neous cessation of the Hebrew as a living language. From 
the significancy of its names and terms, derived from natural 
objects or qualities, it bears intrinsic marks of being a prim- 
itive language, and is esteemed as the most ancient, and, by 
many, the first in the world. But, leaving that matter un- 
touched, it is an unquestionable fact that it ceased to be a 
language in common use on the closing of the Old Testa- 
ment Canon, and w r as thus sealed up as sacred — the lan- 
guage of their fathers in all former generations — the lan- 
guage in which their laws and ordinances were conveyed — 
and in which the Scriptures, which the Jewish nation held 
as the oracles of God, were written. Whatever traditions, 
in other tongues, they might add unto their law, the word 
itself once completed, and the language set apart for it, was 
not to be touched. The pure Hebrew tongue was in every 
after age studied for its sake. It was held as the fixed, un- 
challengeable law of Israel ; of the minutest rites of which 
the Jews, while a people, were, as they often are to this day, 
punctiliously observant. And as connecting the evidence of 
the antiquity of the Old Testament Scripture and of their 
genuineness as the sacred writings of the Jews, it may be suf- 
ficient, in so cursory a sketch, finally to observe, that on 
the undeviating and universal testimony of the Jewish na- 
tion, who, as a people, rejected the gospel before they were 
themselves rejected of God ; and more especially on the tes- 
timony of the priests and scribes, to whom especially the 
custody and guardianship of the Scriptures were committed, 
and whose office it was to read and to expound them unto 
the people in the synagogues or assemblies every Sabbath 
day ; and who, moreover, were the bitterest enemies of the 
Christian faith, at whose instigation Jesus was put to death, 
as their descendants still execrate his name, there stands 
the period of four hundred years between the time of the Old 
Testament and commencement of the Christian era. 

The fact, established on incontrovertible evidence, that so 
long a period intervened from the time that the Hebrew 
Scriptures were completed, and the sun had gone down over 



95 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

the prophets, until their word concerning the Messiah began 
to be fulfilled, might alone suffice for showing that the Old 
Testament dispensation, as preparatory to the " new cove- 
nant," of which it speaks, and which is predicted or pre- 
figured from its commencement to its close, had accomplished 
its main object when the testimony was sealed, and when 
the law was perfected for fulfilling the office of a school- 
master to bring men unto Christ. And the priority to the 
Christian era of the prophetic record being clear beyond the 
mooting of a doubt, the inquiry, without any farther pream- 
ble, would be open for free discussion, on the unchallenge- 
able testimony of the prophets, whether Jesus, the author of 
the Christian faith, be, as he himself professed, and as his 
disciples preached unto the world, or be not, the Messiah, 
whose coming the Jews in every age have expected, and of 
whom all the prophets, whose inspiration is as indubitably 
demonstrated as the high antiquity of their testimony, had 
testified in preceding ages. And, without starting to an ab- 
rupt or illegitimate conclusion, the Christian evidence might 
be speedily summed up by turning at once from the antiquity of 
the Old Testament Scriptures to the authenticity of the New. 
It may not, however, be an unprofitable task to take up 
the controversy for a moment with those aliens of Israel and 
adversaries of the gospel who have made the credibility of 
the Old Testament the chief object of their attacks ; and who, 
having directed against it all the power of ridicule and the 
forms of philosophical research, have boldly vaunted of their 
triumph against the law and the testimony, as professedly 
given by Moses and the prophets. That vain boast must at 
least be greatly moderated, if not wholly overborne at once, 
by the palpable fact that its antiquity alone being admitted 
or demonstrated, the Old Testament throughout is stamped 
by heaven and certified by earth as the record of predictions 
Divine as they are true. Yet even the momentary semblance 
of a triumph, in respect to the Scriptural history of any age, 
or to any portion of holy writ, is far too much to be inno- 
cently or rationally conceded to the impugners of its truth. 
And in testing the genuineness of the history contained in 
the Bible, the trial may be made whether, after the severest 
scrutiny on the part of gainsayers, and the fiery ordeal which 
even the most ancient portion of scripture has of late years 
been made to pass through, the Bible does not come forth 
approved as the word of the Most High, even more mani- 
festly, though not more truly than before, like those ser- 
vants of the Lord of whom it tells, who were cast bound into 
the midst of a burning fiery furnace, but who walked in the 
midst of the fire and had no hurt, and upon whose bodies, on 
their coming forth, the fire, as every witness saw, had no 
power, nor was a hair of their head singed, neither were their 
coats changed, nor had the smell of fire passed on them. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 93 



SECTION I. 

Whether history fulfil a nobler office in recording, as its 
ultimate design, the deeds of heroes and the revolutions of 
empires, over which every enlightened moralist must mourn, 
or in transmitting, though unconsciously, from age to age, 
the testimonials of a presiding Deity, by the verification of 
his prophetic word, may be left to the decision of every man 
who truly believes in the existence of a God, without wait- 
ing for the time when the pride of all glory shall be stained, 
and the Lord alone shall be exalted. There can be no con- 
troversy that it was only about the time when the Old Tes- 
tament history was closed, that, as in contradistinction it is 
termed, profane history, generally acknowledged and re- 
ceived as authentic, began. Nehemiah, the last of the scrip- 
tural historians who described the return of the Jews from 
the Babylonish captivity, was contemporary with Herodotus, 
the reputed father of history. From that period, when the 
one class of historians succeeded to the other, and when 
facts, in merely human records, began to be divested of fable 
with which they had previously been darkened and disfigured, 
we have to look downward with the light of prophecy on 
the successive changes influential on the fate of the world, 
till the final unsealing of the vision and the consummation of 
all things ; and from the same period, as if raised upon an 
eminence from which the whole history of our race may be 
both prospectively and retrospectively seen, we can look 
back, guided by the clear light of scripture history amid all 
the profound darkness around, till, by a continuous and un- 
broken line, the eye of shortlived mortals can reach to cre- 
ation itself revealed to our view ; so that from thence it may 
be manifest that " God's word is perfect," as engrossing in 
itself the history of the world, as well as in proffering salva- 
tion to man, and in placing before him an eternal state. 

In reference to the most ancient portion of the Hebrew 
Scriptures, it was alleged by Hume that the Pentateuch, or 
the five books of Moses, has to be considered as " the pro- 
duction of a mere human writer and historian ; a book pre- 
sented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in 
an age when they were still more barbarous, and, in all prob- 
ability, long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by 
no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous ac- 
counts which every nation gives of its origin."* A mere 
human (or uninspired) writer never foretold events, before 

* Hume's Essays, vol. ii., p. 137. 



94 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

unparalleled, and which have proved literally true after the 
lapse of three thousand years. The more barbarous and 
ignorant that the Israelites were, it becomes the more incon- 
ceivable that such a production as the Bible could have owed 
its origin, as a mere human composition, to such a people 
or to such an age. The earliest of the facts which it records 
avowedly preceded the days of Moses 2500 years, as others 
were anticipated for a longer period. And if the facts which 
he records concerning the origin of nations not only re- 
semble the accounts given by every nation, but entirely con- 
cur with them, then, instead of none, they are corroborated 
by the concurring testimony of all nations. 

In very truth, the writings of Moses stand alone, without 
any other record to cope or to compare with them. From 
among all the books in the world, not one is to be found that 
comes within reach of them in point of antiquity ; and all 
those of a later date which have any reference to those pri- 
meval ages, come as far short of the definiteness, coherence, 
and precision of the Mosaic record. The Bible, without a 
competitor and without a rival, may well be said to contain 
the only history of our race ; the origin of which would, 
without it, be involved in impenetrable oblivion. And while 
some presumptive evidence, on behalf of the authenticity of 
the Pentateuch, may be deduced from the averment of an 
adversary, they who are as prone to cavil at the lack of tes- 
timony in corroboration of the Old Testament as to disavow 
the authority of any and of all testimony in confirmation of 
the New, may find that there is evidence corroborative of 
facts related by Moses far more conclusive than any con- 
curring testimony alone, handed dowm by tradition or unin- 
spired writings, could possibly have supplied. The " book 
of the Lord" needs not the voucher of a book by man. 

Although no contemporary record is to be found, Hume 
might have learned from Grotius, and others who preceded 
him, that concurring testimony to many facts recorded by 
Moses would not, if sought, have been searched for in vain.* 
The genuineness of the Pentateuch was acknowledged by 
Porphyry and by Julian, and the denial of it was left to the 
bolder and less scrupulous objectors of modern times, who 
have thus called forth on its behalf a higher vindication than 
the testimony which was borne to it by the early enemies 
of the gospel. 

The history of the Jews was scarcely a theme which, ex- 
cept by an occasional passing glance or allusion, lay within 
the scope or province of the Latin writers, till Tacitus re- 
corded their war with the Romans and the destruction of 
Jerusalem. And it is not from Greece that Christians would 

* See extract from Grotius in the Appendix. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 95 

ask for, or skeptics admit of, testimony fully corroborative 
of facts then ancient. Grecian authors could practise to 
perfection the art of moulding a tale to the Athenian ear 
with all the polish and precision with which Phidias could 
set before the eye the image of a heathen god. But neither 
was historical or antiquarian research a passion with the 
Greeks, nor was the simplicity of truth a virtue. That was 
often freely sacrificed in the worship of the graces. And 
all that can reasonably be extracted from them is the infer- 
ence of the fact from the fiction which they had raised on it 
as the foundation. Though intermediate, in time as in place, 
between the Hebrews and Romans, their communication 
with the former was not general or direct till after the com- 
pletion of the Old Testament Scriptures : and it was only by 
tidings of ancient events transacted in a foreign land that 
their historians could have become versant with the Israeli- 
tish history, or with the origin and rise of the Hebrew race. 
And it is not to the historians of Greece that we have directly 
to look for corroborative records of a people whose inter- 
course and warfare were limited to the surrounding nations, 
who spoke a language to them unknown, and who denied 
the existence of the gods whom they adored. 

The more ancient kingdoms of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Chal- 
dea came into more direct and immediate contact with the 
kingdom of Israel ; and their archives may supply more 
abundant and less exceptionable illustrations of the truth of 
that book which alone contains a continuous history of the 
world. And the first of these kingdoms which held Israel in 
bondage supplies, as if in expiation, less perishable memo- 
rials of the fact than the papyrus of the Nile, which afford 
not only a concurring, but even contemporary testimony. 

But the scriptures of truth, professing to be the word of 
the living God, and courting all scrutiny while fearing none, 
stoop not to claim the feeble and imperfect testimony of one 
or two witnesses, or of one or two nations, as the exclusive 
vouchers of their veracity. But since they have been im- 
peached with falsehood by scoffers in the last times and 
modern ingenuity has adduced arguments against them un- 
heard of before, the God of truth has so ordered it that the 
appeal on their behalf may now be made to authorities and 
credentials formerly unknown : and they can call for wit- 
nesses to bear u concurring testimony," from the one ex- 
tremity of the globe to the other ; they can summon them 
out of the ancient temples of idolatrous Egypt, as if a dead 
language had come to life again, and had found at their call 
a responsive voice ; they can appeal to the most recent dis- 
coveries to attest the most ancient facts w T hich they record, 
and bid the heavens and the earth at last bear witness to 
truths which they alone have hitherto revealed. 



96 THE ANTIQUITY ANB AUTHENTICITY 

Whenever simple facts dissipate vain imaginations, there 
is a dazzling brightness around every portion of the Chris- 
tian evidence, the light of which, from the very multiplicity 
of the rays, it is difficult to concentrate. Here, as else- 
where, the labour lies, not in seeking and finding, but in se- 
lecting and condensing the evidence, which, like that of the 
fulfilment of prophecy, is still accumulating. Yet, even in 
the small space to which, in a brief and summary view, the 
condensation of the authenticity of the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures must necessarily be limited, it may be easy to show 
how triumphant is the refutation of the charge, that the Pen- 
tateuch is corroborated by no concurring testimony. 

The knowledge of any remarkable event, calculated to 
excite the wonder or amuse the fancy of a people eager af- 
ter novelties, may have passed from Judea, the scene of 
their transaction, into Greece ; and, notwithstanding the as- 
sumption of other names attached to the agents, and the 
addition of the decorations of fancy, the similarity may be 
such as to render presumptive their Israelitish origin. The 
remembrance of those more important, but alike memorable 
events, which involved the interests of other nations besides 
the Jews, especially of the kingdom of Assyria or Egypt, 
would naturally have been transmitted, without the bounds 
of Judea, from one generation to another, till they should 
find a place in less obscure and historical records ; and direct 
references to them may be found in such memorials as ex- 
ist of the history of those ancient kingdoms with whose in- 
terests those of Israel were at times involved. The knowl- 
edge of those things which are written in the Bible, that per- 
tained to the general state of the world, or affected equally 
the whole family of man, would naturally become the fun- 
damental traditional inheritance of all nations, however 
diverse their subsequent character, and however extended 
their ultimate dispersion throughout the world. And fixed 
monuments, supplied by nature, may be found, which bear 
testimony independent alike of human tradition or record. 
And from such plain and independent means of comparison 
and modes of proof, the trial may be made whether — not- 
withstanding the darkness which overspread the whole pa- 
gan world in the times of Moses and the prophets, and the 
meagerness of all the detailed events that have come down 
from thence to this far distant period — the sacred writings 
of the Jews and the facts which they register are not cor- 
roborated by concurring testimony, not only more copious, 
apposite, and clear than the reader, if unused to such an in- 
vestigation, could have surmised or conceived, even on the 
supposition of the perfect truth of the Bible, but also suffi- 
cient to give the lie to the supposititious and unsubstantiated 
assertions of hostile declaimers ; and enough, where their 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 97 

allegations are the boldest, to refute the calumnies, and, 
where their boastings are the loudest, to put to silence the 
ignorance of foolish men, who speak evil of the things that 
they do not or will not understand. 

It is, unhappily, the more needful to adduce or recapitulate 
such testimony at a time when, forgetful that judgments on 
nations are not yet passed away, and that the judgment of 
each individual is yet to come, men are to be found- in a 
land professedly Christian who desecrate w T hat even pagans 
revered ; and who, renouncing the scriptures as they are 
given for instruction in righteousness, convert them into 
themes for profane ribaldry and matter for impious exhibi- 
tions, and turn the recorded terrors of the Lord into scenes 
of theatrical mockery and merriment, as if God had left the 
ruins of guilty cities and the wreck of a former world to tes- 
tify in vain of the certainty of judgments and the truth of 
his word, and as if men were vindicating the renewal of his 
wrath by defying his right hand to take hold on vengeance 
again. 

Towards the close of last century, and in the beginning of 
the present, many, full charged w r ith infidelity, went forth 
from France, and some from England too, in unholy pil- 
grimages to the scenes of scriptual history. It was easy for 
such ingenious sophists, by the construction of a theory from 
strata of lava, or paintings on a wall, to show, as if with 
mathematical demonstration, that these things had existed 
for thousands of years before the Mosaic date of the creation. 
Unhappily for such fancies, the discovery has soon followed 
that similar successive strata cover ruins first entombed af- 
ter the Christian era, and that scarcely a higher date can be 
assigned to the wall from which the proof was taken of the 
antiquity of the world. But, in a matter of evidence, we may 
turn from imaginary theories to the facts which dissipate 
them, though they were multiplied beyond the power of enu- 
meration. And if science, in these respects, be so far per- 
fected that the truth can be elucidated, then the objections 
against holy writ, however forcible, singly or in combina- 
tion, they may seem to every eye that is turned aside from 
a doctrine according to godliness, need but to be brought to 
the light that their inherent hollowness may be discovered ; 
and without specifying their nature or reckoning their num- 
ber, if they stand not, like the facts recorded by Volney, pil- 
lars of the faith, their pretensions need but to be contrasted 
with their fallacy, that they may remain, till their remem- 
brance perish, the memorials of the truth of the favourite 
maxim of those who framed them, that, as to them, ridicule 
is the test of truth. 

Truth is immutable. And the Scriptures profess to be the 
word of Him who changeth not. Falsehood, on the other 

I 



98 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

hand, is fluctuating and perishable. And the arguments of 
skeptics against the credibility of the Mosaic history have 
shown their chameleon quality, and varied not a little in their 
form and substance, since Voltaire, fearful of admitting a fact 
illustrative of the truth of the deluge, denied the existence 
of any fossil remains. It may suffice for our present purpose, 
and be best suited to our limited space, to combine in a sin- 
gle view the various evidence drawn from sources the most 
independent of each other that can possibly be conceived, 
corroborative of the Old Testament history, in reference 
specially to facts which have been keenly controverted. 



SECTION II. 

In respect to the creation of the world from a state of 
chaos, and the formation of man from the clay or dust of the 
earth, though alike antecedent to all human testimony, the 
concurrence of the scriptural narrative with that which had 
come down from the earliest ages is such that Ovid, recount- 
ing it, seems to be the paraphrast of Moses. Long prior to 
the most ancient of records, the great events which involved 
the destiny of our race were necessarily such as could not 
but be transmitted, though in a faint and fabulous form, from 
generation to generation. And the golden age, in which 
holiness and happiness prevailed, denotes the primeval inno- 
cence and bliss, when all things were good as God had crea- 
ted them. The garden of the Hesperides, bearing golden 
apples, is a picture of the garden of Eden, where grew every 
tree that is pleasant to the sight ; while the serpent that is 
reputed to have guarded them, together with the prevalence 
of serpent- worship throughout the world, is too faithful a 
testimony that there was a serpent there. Testimonies to 
the same fact may be drawn from the New World as from 
the Old. " It is quite notorious that serpent-worship was 
the great characteristic of Mexican mythology. If the ser- 
pent symbol at Palenque conveys a strong indication of 
Tultican affinity with Syria, there are numerous others of a 
still more convincing nature. Dupain exhibits a silver med- 
al, found in one of the sepulchral monuments, which indeed 
points to the source of the whole Ophitic (serpent) worship. 
A man and woman are represented in a garden with a ser- 
pent near them. This is obviously a picture record of the 
first pair in Eden, the serpent, and the fall."* Pandora's box, 
on the opening of which, by the hand of a woman, all evils 
spread throughout the world, is a significant emblem of the 

* Foreign Quarterly Review, No. xxxv., p. 60, 61. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 99 

origin of evil ; while hope, at the bottom, was as significant 
a symbol of the prophetic promise, that, by the seed of the 
woman, evil would finally be destroyed. 

" Nature," says Cuvier, " distinctly informs us that the 
commencement of the present order of things cannot be da- 
ted at a very remote period ; and it is very remarkable that 
mankind everywhere speak the same language with na 
ture."* 

The memory of the deluge was not lost by any nation 
from the one extremity of the globe to the other; and in 
proof that the tradition was maintained through many ages, 
evidence of the same fact has been borne in modern times 
from China, Hindostan, the islands of the Pacific, Mexico, 
and Peru, which concurs with the testimony, remote in time 
as in place, which Chaldea, Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome 
anciently supplied. "The people of Mechoacan have pre- 
served a tradition, according to which Coxcox, whom they 
call Tezpi, embarked in a spacious acalli with his wife and 
children, many animals and grain, the preservation of which 
was dear to the human race. When the Great Spirit com- 
manded the waters to retire, Tezpi sent forth from his bark 
a vulture. The bird, nourished by dead flesh, did not return 
on account of the great number of carcasses which were 
scattered upon the newly-dried earth. Tezpi sent out other 
birds, of which the humming-bird alone returned, bearing in 
its beak a branch covered with leaves. After which Tezpi, 
seeing that the soil began to be covered with new verdure, 
left his bark near the mountain of Colhuacan." " Every- 
where," adds Humboldt, " the traces of a common origin, 
the opinions concerning cosmogony, and the primitive tra- 
ditions of nations, present a striking analogy even in minute 
circumstances. Does not the humming-bird of Tezpi call to 
mind the dove of Noah, that of Deucalion, and the birds, ac- 
cording to Berosus, which Xisutrus sent forth from the ark, 
to try if the waters had subsided, and if as yet he could erect 
altars to the gods of Chaldea V- — Humboldt, Vues des Cor- 
dilleres, p. 227. The raven no less than the dove, and the 
order no less than the name ; the first, the ravenous bird not 
returning; the second, for ever afterward the bird of peace, 
reappearing and re-entering, identify each narrative as that 
of the selfsame fact with a speciality of circumstances which 
sober reason cannot misinterpret or mistrust. And the leafy 
twig in the bill of a little bird needs but to be traditionally 
brought back again from the extremity of the globe, where, 
without the possibility of being transplanted anew, it had 
nourished for many ages, in order to prove, at last, as fresh 
a testimony, to the old world and to the new, of the truth of 

* Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, § 33, 



100 The antiquity and authenticity 

the fact, as at first it was a sure token to the inmates of the 
ark that they should soon tread on the renovated earth. 
How, but as coming from the only surviving family of man, 
could the tradition have been preserved simple and uncor- 
rupted, in the midst of the remotest regions so long undis- 
covered. One half of the world was unknown unto the other, 
but the twig that a bird did bear was remembered by both ; 
nor was the leaf forgotten. It survived like the ark in a 
deluged world ; and it alone may show that faith may bud 
again where afore it was blasted. While the prophetic fate 
of the sons of Noah is visible to this hour, the very names 
of several of the earliest nations — such as the Canaanites, 
Assyrians, Elymceites, Lydians, Medes, and Hebrews* — cor- 
roborate to the letter the historical facts recorded by Mo- 
ses, that Canaan, Ashur, Elam, Lud, Madai, and Eber were 
justly numbered among the descendants of Noah, by whom 
the nations were divided in the earth after the flood. " The 
period of seven days, by far the most permanent division of 
time, and the most ancient monument of astronomical knowl- 
edge, was used by the Brahmins in India with the same de- 
nominations employed by us, and was alike found in the cal- 
endars of the Jews, Egyptians, Arabs, and Assyrians. It has 
survived the fall of empires, and has existed among all suc- 
cessive generations, a proof of their common origin."! While 
the destruction of Sodom, synchronical with the call of 
Abraham, did not pass unnoticed by ancient writers, the 
Dead Sea, a bituminous lake, unlike to any other, is a stri- 
king corroboration of the recorded judgment on the cities of 
the plain, which its waters have since filled: and the recent 
and remarkable discovery, that the Jordan, before its course 
was stayed, passed through the plain and flowed into the Red 
Sea, is strikingly illustrative of the scriptural narrative, as 
Colonel Leake, the learned editor of Burckhardt's work, has 
observed ; and that fact has since been amply elucidated by 
the scientific Leon Laborde, and the evidence is set before 
us by a chart of the channel, or of the valley through which 
the Jordan flowed, and which still retains its name, El Ghor, 
where the Jordan once flowed as where it still flows on. 

And while the alleged want of a contemporary history is 
thus newly supplied, a still more recent discovery presents 
a contemporary picture, coeval with the birth of Moses, and 
copied by Rosselini and Wilkinson, which may be said to be 
a commentary on the first chapter of Exodus, and to set the 
Israelites before our eyes actually engaged in the hard bond- 
age in mortar and brick as Moses described them. The 
Egyptian taskmaster is set over them with a rod in his hand ; 

* Bochart, &c. 

t Mrs. Somerville on the Physical Sciences, p. 104. 




c runtu^.l-Ai,: 




anBWffSM a 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 101 

the diversity of colour as well as of their countenances distin- 
guish the oppressed Hebrew slaves ; and the whole process 
of their labour is seen till the tale of bricks maybe counted. 
" Their countenances are as perfectly Jewish," according to 
the Literary Gazette, " as those of any old clothesmen from 
St. Mary Axe who now perambulate the streets of London. 
Neither Lawrence nor Jackson could have painted more real 
Jews ; the features so changeless and so peculiar to that peo- 
ple. And then their occupation ; the several portions of the 
process of brick-making, their limbs bespattered with the 
mud, and their Egyptian taskmasters with the scourge super- 
intending their labour. The whole seems to us to be a clear 
and decisive evidence, not only of the captivity, but of the 
actual circumstances related in the history of Moses. The 
Egyptians in the original are painted in the usual red ; the 
Israelites of a sallow colour ; and when we reflect that, 
throughout all the other subjects figured in these sepulchres 
of Beni-Hassan, the utmost regard is paid to individuality, 
and even to minute accessories, we cannot imagine a reason 
to induce us to question the truth and application of this re- 
markable discovery."* " Rosselini's last livraison of illustra- 
tions brings those Jews before our eyes who were captives 
in Egypt under the eighteenth dynasty, and previous to the 
Exodus. Independently of other evidence drawn from the 
phonetic language to prove that they are Jews, no cursory 
reader who glances at their lineaments or persons will for 
a moment doubt their identity. These Jews are employed 
under the dynasty of the very kings contemporary with Moses, 
in the specific act of slavery, which he and Manetho both de- 
scribe, viz., making bricks and working in the quarries. An 
Egyptian taskmaster superintends the work ; and the bricks, 
according to their delineation, are precisely those which are 
found in walls constructed of bricks, the date of which is as- 
signable to the era in question."! The Egyptians set over 
them taskmasters to affiict them with their burdens, and made 
their lives bitter ivith hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and 
in all manner of service in the field. \ Exclusive of the brick- 
makers set before our eyes by Rosselini, a small picture is 
also introduced in the annexed plate, which was kindly fur- 
nished by Mr. Wilkinson. The outline of some of the heads 
and features are exactly engraved of the full size of the 
original drawings. 

The temporary triumph of the Egyptians over the Jews in 
a subsequent age has also, in that land of their enemies, a 
striking memorial. Shishak, or Sheshouk, king of Egypt, is 
represented in another of Champollion's drawings as "drag- 

* Literary Gazette, No. 943, p. 99. 

t Foreign Quarterly Review, No. xxxii., p. 318. 

% Exodus i., 11, 14. 

12 



102 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

ging the chiefs of above thirty conquered nations to the feet 
of the idols of Thebes." One of these is represented in 
hieroglyphic characters as Joudaha Malek, the king of Judah.* 
And in the chronicles of the kings of Judah we read that 
Rehoboam (the son of Solomon) forsook the law of the 
Lord, and all Israel with him. And in the fifth year of King 
Rehoboam, Shishak, king of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem, 
and took the fenced cities of Judah, and came to Jerusalem. 
Then came Shemaiah the prophet to Rehoboam and to the 
princes of Judah that were gathered together to Jerusalem 
because of Shishak, and said unto them, Thus saith the Lord, 
Ye have forsaken me, and therefore have I also left you in 
the hands of Shishak. So Shishak, king of Egypt, came up 
against Jerusalem, and took away the treasures of the house 
of the Lord, and the treasures of the king's house : he car- 
ried away also the shields of gold which Solomon had 
made.f Rehoboam, the king of Judah, is still to be seen, 
as for a time he was left, according to the word of the proph- 
et, in the hand of Shishak, king of Egypt. 

The history of the Jews needs not any other concurring 
evidence to show that their prophetic fate was portrayed by 
Moses as faithfully as a painter could depict their visage. 
While he is thus set forth as the prophet of the Highest, it 
may be mentioned, as Grotius and others have shown, that 
pagan writers in ancient times failed not to pay some tribute 
of respect to the legislator of Israel. Asa writer, he was 
deemed worthy by Longinus of honourable mention in his 
treatise on the Sublime. As the promulgator of a new reli- 
gion wholly divested of idolatry, Strabo describes him as 
abandoning Egypt, followed by those who worshipped God 
alone, and planting his people and his faith in that land of 
which Jerusalem was afterward the capital.J The name of 
the desert, El Tih, or the wandering, is yet a testimony of the 
wanderings of the Israelites. And in reference to the his- 
tory of Moses, Laborde, who partly traversed the same route, 
states that the Bible is so concise and so precisely true, that 
it is only by a close attention to each word that all its merit 
can be discovered. § The tomb of Aaron, on the summit of 
Mount Hor, is one of the most conspicuous objects in the 
land of Edom, and, surrounded as it is by many an evidence 
of prophetic truth, still bears testimony to the death and 
burying-place of the first high-priest of Israel. Aaron died 
there on the top of the mount. Though, till within these 

* See the Saturday Magazine, No. 81. 

f 1 Kings xiv., 25, 26. 2 Chron. xii., 1-9. 

% Strabo, 1. xvi., torn, ii., p. 1082, 1083, ed. Falcon. 

§ " La Bible est si concise, mais en meme temps d'une precision si vraie, 
que c'est avec une attention fixee sur chaque mot qu'on peut en retrouver 
tout le merite. — Voyage de L? Arable Petree, p. 39. 




j?igores partly restored . 



NEW 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 



103 



very few years, unheard of and unknown, and situated in 
the midst of the land of the enemies of Israel; though for 
many ages possessed by the wild Arabs, neither of Israelitish 
nor of Christian faith, yet there, on the top of Mount Hor, 
where he died, is the tomb of Aaron, a memorial on the spot. 
In contradiction to positive evidence and existing facts, 
skeptics have denied the ancient fertility of Palestine. But 
as the fruit of the land was of old shown unto the Israelites, 
similar evidence may be adduced from " the gleaning of the 
grapes," though the vintage is done. " Galilee," says JVIalte- 
Brun, " would be a paradise were its inhabitants an indus- 
trious people under an enlightened government. Vine-stocks 
are to be found here a foot and a half in diameter, forming 
by their twining branches vast arches and extensive ceilings 
of verdure. A cluster of grapes, two or three feet in length, 
will give an abundant supper to a whole family."* From 
the opposite extremity of Palestine, Laborde thus presents 
us with a grape or two of an enormous cluster. 




The progress of population in America has supplied a prac- 
tical refutation of the objection which skeptics theoretically 
adduced against the Mosaic account of the rapid multiplica- 
tion of the human race, and the early establishment of king- 
doms after the era of the deluge. 

u As regards the actual progress of population in the prim- 
itive ages, the example of the United States furnishes a very 
important experimental parallel. The white population of 
these provinces amounted in 1790 to 3,200,000. and has been 

* Malte-Brun's Geography, vol. ii., p. 148. 



104 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

ascertained by the censuses of 1800, 1810, 1820, and 1830, to 
have doubled itself within a quarter of a century, and to be 
still proceeding at that rate, as appears by the American 
Almanac for 1832. Mr. Malthus had arrived at a similar con- 
clusion before the census of 1820. Should this progress con- 
tinue unabated for 160 years longer, the number would be 
800,000,000, which is nearly equal to the estimated popula- 
tion of the world ; while reverting to the mean date of plant- 
ing, A. D. 1665, the same principle of increase, which the last- 
mentioned writer (an undeniable authority for information 
and data, however we may be disposed to disagree with his 
general system) concludes to have been in force for a cen- 
tury and a half preceding the year 1800, would suppose a 
population of 100,000 only at that period ; and ascending, for 
the sake of the parallel, 325 years higher, we should arrive 
at the number twelve, being that of the sons of Noah with 
their wives, supposing their number to have been doubled, in 
agreement with the principle we are speaking of, within two 
years after the flood, the date of the birth of Arphaxad (Gen. 
xl., 10). 

" Thus it appears that, according to the American progress, 
twelve males and females might increase to 100,000 in 325 
years, to 3,200,000 in 450 years, and to 820,000,000 in 650 
years. But supposing the primitive population to have 
doubled itself in fifteen years, of which we are not without 
examples in modern states — such has been the progress in the 
back settlements of America, according to Dr. Price — then 
mankind might have arrived at the number of 400,000 in 225 
years, the interval which the Hebrew account supposes be- 
tween the deluge and the middle data of Peleg's life, and have 
increased to the maximum of 820,000,000 in 390 years, when 
Abraham was about forty years old."* 

Though populous kingdoms may thus be of recent origin, 
and spring rapidly, like Rome, from small beginnings, pride 
is natural to man ; and the race of antediluvian and post- 
diluvian patriarchs prior to the establishment of kingdoms, 
supplied an easy means to the primitive nations of gratifying 
the pride of ancestry, and attributing their origin to a high 
antiquity, simply by appropriating peculiarly to each what 
was alike common to all. The following lucid exposition of 
this topic also is here thankfully adopted. 

"It is commonly urged that the times of the gods, heroes, 
priests, or by whatever other names they were called, which 
are found prefixed to the histories of all primitive nations, and 
to whom the foundation of cities and kingdoms is too com- 
monly attributed, requires the utmost latitude which the bib- 

* Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. xii., p. 328. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES, 



105 



lical computation of time will allow. Such is the theory 
which assumes, without a shadow of authority from any 
ancient writer, that successive hierarchies, devoted to the 
worship of Hephaestus, Helius, Cronus and Osiris, laid the 
foundation of Thebes, and erected its most enormous edifices 
in ages long preceding Menes and the Egyptian dynasties. 
These views, originally the offspring of infidelity, but unac- 
countably sanctioned by too many enlightened inquirers, are, 
as we have shown, opposed by the concurrent evidence of 
the Jewish and Gentile writers of the first ages, and they 
are for ever annihilated by the important series of discoveries 
which has distinguished our times. Not only the Jews and 
Egyptians, but the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the 
Chaldeans, and other nations, have prefixed this priestly suc- 
cession, under different names, to their annals ; a community 
of system that ^-t once resolves itself into the patriarchal 
stem from whence all nations radiated, and which recognises 
the monarchical as the common form of government adopted 
by mankind when separated into distinct societies. The last- 
mentioned fact, conspicuous in the Mosaic record, is ren- 
dered indisputable by the almost identical epochs of primi- 
tive monarchies, so far as history or tradition has preserved 
them. All, however widely separated, have reference to a 
common epoch ; and all are preceded by one or more eras 
belonging to the priestly or patriarchal ages, which identify 
themselves with the Mosaic accounts of the same series of 
events. This will clearly appear if the reader will take the 
trouble to compare the following table with the former one.* 



References to Text. 


i. 

Ctul- 
dea. 


ii. 

Chi- 
nese. 


III. 

Hin- 
doo. 


VII. 

Egypt. 


v. 

Assy- 
ria. 


VI. 

Sicyon. 


IV. 
Hin- 
doo. 


Gods, or Antediluvians, B.C. 
Demigods, or postdiluvians 
Kingdoms ..-.-..' 


3673 
3490 

2233 


2952 
2357 
2207 


3164 

2204 


3389 
2405 

2988 


2185 


2376 
2171 


3i02 
2102 



" The circumstance most worthy of notice in reference to 
these dates, and a most important one, is, that all the epochs 
of primitive kingdoms, from China to Peloponnesus, fall in with 
Peleg's lifetime, according to the Hebrew. It hence becomes 
self-evident, that all have reference to the common stem and 

* " We here insert a table of the deluge and of the birth and death of 
Peleg, together with the mean date of his life according to the Hebrew, 
Samaritan, and the Greek authorities, adding the mean date of the flood 
fixed only by Klaproth in his ' Asia Polyglotta,' from a comparison of the 
Samaritan, the Chinese, and the Hindoo elements. We also insert, the 
Egyptian eras of Champollion and Rosellini in their proper places, adopting 
the received and demonstrable date of the birth of Abraham, B.C. 1996, as 
fixed by all the versions, and subscribed to by Champollion, for the basis q| 
the whole," 



i06 



THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 



common era of kingdoms ; and this furnishes another pow- 
erful argument that the Hebrew numbers, thus confirmed by 
widely-separated witnesses, contain the original computa- 
tion of sacred history."* 

While an important series of discoveries which have distin- 
guished our times, has annihilated for ever skeptical theories 
in this instance as in others ; and the origin of primitive king- 
doms is traced to a common era, identified with that of the 
lifetime of Peleg, his name is not only thus linked in cor- 
roborative testimony, but it is associated also with a series of 
internal proofs, which, from the beginning, distinguished the 
history of the Hebrew race from that of all the families among 
which the earth was divided. 



SECTION III. 

The name of Peleg, the son of Eber, and an ancestor of 
Abraham, has a literal signincancy worthy of the place which 
it occupies, and the importance of which may now be appre- 
ciated. The Hebrew word Peleg signifies division. And that 
name was given to him ; "for in his days was the earth di- 
vided" "among the families of the sons of Noah, after their 
generations in their nations."! Or. in other words, as mod- 
ern discoveries or researches show, " all the epochs of primi- 
tive kingdoms fall in with Peleg's lifetime," whose name 
denotes their division. 

Coeval with the days of Peleg was the building of Babel ; 
and up to the period when the great family of man was di- 
vided into distinct nations, and spread over the earth, may 
be traced the diversity of tongues. And combining historic 
with prophetic truth, the earliest of cities supplies, from the 
first as to the last, its concurring testimony. While the 
judgment-stricken Babylon, cut down to the ground because 
it had striven against the Lord, is spread forth as a tablet on 



The deluge ceases B.C. . . . 
Egyptian era of Champollion 
Egyptian era of Rosellini . . 

Birth of Peleg 

Mean date of Peleg's life . . 
Death of Peleg ......... 

Birth of Abraham ...... 



Hebr. 

2347 



2247 
2127 
2008 



2997 



2597 
2477 
2358 
1996! 



LXX. Cod. Rom. 



2997 or 3097 



2597 or 2697 
2427 or 2527 
2258 or 2358 
1996 1996 



70 Alex. 

3127 



2597 
2427 
2258 
1996 



3047 



2647 



1996 



Klap. 



3076 
2782 
2712 



* Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. xii., p. 384. See Appendix, 
t Gen. x., 25-32. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 107 

which the spirit of prophecy has set its seal, and has stamped 
with many indelible impressions, as its own, the name {Babel 
or Babylon, i. e., confusion*) yet remains an undecaying me- 
morial of the confusion of tongues. And while the walls of 
the greatest city on which the sun ever shone have long 
ceased to be the wonder of the world, except in their being 
utterly broken, the name of Babel or Babylon, no longer a 
terror to the nations, is a proverb to the people, and in all 
the ends of the earth still bears concurring testimony to the 
cause of the original dispersion of our race. 

The next great event, alike influential on the fate of the 
world, and calculated ultimately to bring all mankind into one 
family — the household of the faith — was the call of Abraham, 
and the covenant of God with the patriarch, whose name is 
no less renowned than that of Babylon. And like another 
nail fastened in a sure place, that name was given by the 
Lord. God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold my cov- 
enant is with thee ; and thou shalt be a father of many nations. 
Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram ; but thy name 
shall be called Abraham; for a father of many nations have I 
made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful ; and I will 
make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. f 

While the whole history of the Jews, in every age and in 
every land, is a perpetual proof of the inspiration of Scrip- 
ture, a still existing progeny, ''numerous as the stars of heav- 
en," and scattered over the earth, even as these bespangle 
the firmament, is an existing proof that none but the Omnis- 
cient could, in truth, have given to their primogenitor the 
name of Abraham, i. e., the father of a multitude. To whom 
else, since his days, can the name so appropriately pertain, 
as to him whose descendants peopled Palestine, Edom, and 
Arabia ; and whom the Arabs, with their multitude of tribes, 
and the Israelites, dispersed throughout the earth, both alike 
still numbered by millions, have claimed, for more than a 
hundred generations, as their common father? And whose 
prophetic name yet awaits its full significancy, till all the 
families of the earth shall be blessed in his seed, and all na- 
tions shall call that man the father of the faithful ; to whom 
the Lord thus spake, " Thy name shall be Abraham ; for a 
father of many nations have I made thee ;" and of wiiom he 
said, " I am the God of Abraham." Not a word can come in 
vain from the mouth of the Lord ; and as this word has not 
returned void, but is still proved by millions, or multitudes 
of the seed of Abraham, so that name itself, literally under- 
stood, cannot be repeated without perpetuating the testimony 
which it bears to the call of Abraham. 

But the name of Abraham was not the only patronymic 

* Gen. xi., 9. t Ibid, xvii., 4-6. 



108 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

first given on that selfsame day, but to be held in everlast- 
ing remembrance. The change of a syllable and of a letter 
gave a prophetic significancy to the names of Abram and 
Sarai, and, in their new names Abraham and Sarah, imbod- 
ied the promise of the Lord, of which future ages have man- 
ifested the fulfilment. Nations have called her mother who 
was then known only as aged and childless : and races of 
kings in Jerusalem and Samaria, after the lapse of a thou- 
sand years, gloried in their pedigree from the venerable pair 
that pitched their tent in the plain of Mamre many centuries 
before there was a king in Israel. Prophecies yet unfulfilled 
speak of their descendants, when finally restored to Zion, as 
those for whom the isles shall surely wait, unto whom the 
kings of the Gentiles shall minister, and whom the nations 
and kingdoms shall serve or be destroyed. But the name of 
Sarah or princess, as given by the Lord, has received such 
illustrations of its significancy in ages past, as naturally star- 
tled, on their announcement, the faith of Abraham. And God 
said unto Abraham, as for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her 
name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. And I will bless her 
and give thee a son also of her : yea, I will bless her, and she 
shall be a mother of nations ; kings of people shall be m of her. 
Then Abraham fell upon his face and laughed, and said in his 
heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is a hundred years old ? 
and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear ?* The incredu- 
lity of man may ever be overruled for the confirmation of 
the word that is of God. And while the covenant, which, 
whether in its observance or its breach on the part of the- 
Israelites or Edomites, has been ratified by blessings and by 
judgments, such as no other covenant but that made with 
Adam ever was, has stood for nearly four thousand years y 
and yet awaits its final and everlasting confirmation, the 
laughter of Abraham, though he had fallen on his face, and 
of Sarah who subsequently laughed within herself and de- 
nied it with her tongue, has from that hour been commemo- 
rated, though unconsciously, in the name of Isaac. And God 
said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed ; and thou sliaM 
call his name Isaac (i.e., laughter); and I will establish my\ 
covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seeat 
after him.\ 

Never were names so indelibly affixed to any covenant 
between man and man, as those which may thus be identi- 
fied as originating in the covenant of God with Abraham. 
There was not then another man upon the earth of whose 
descendants even the existence is now known, or to whom 
such a promise could, in truth, have been given. And is 
there a man upon the earth who knows not at sight the He- 

* Genesis xvij. ? l£, 16, 17. f Ibid, xvii., 19. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES, 109 

brew race 1 or who may not see from their existence and 
their number that God alone could have given to Abram the 
Hebrew the name of Abraham 1 In no country on earth 
could we search in vain for living commentaries on that 
name. And there was not then, besides Hagar, another wo- 
man upon earth but Sarah only, whom any nation or any in- 
dividual now calls mother, or of whom it is recorded that 
kings were descended. But to her unchangeable name, 
when once it was given by the Lord, is attached the unre- 
pealed promise, kings of the nations shall be of her. And if 
belief be founded on experience, as our enemies maintain, 
and as Christians may fearlessly concede, millenaries or 
thousands of years go far by their testimony to prove that 
that covenant was everlasting, the apparent and natural im- 
possibility of the ratification of which, even for a single year, 
gave rise to the incredulity, even in the breast of Abraham, 
which has yet its memorial in every enunciation of the name 
of Isaac. It needs no proof that human compacts are dis- 
solved by time, as their seals of wax melt before the fire. 
The longer that is the declared term of their validity, the 
more surely, in general, are they ultimately valueless, or pass 
away as if they had never been. Who can tell how great is 
the number — the numbers without number — of compacts be- 
tween man and man, or of treaties between nation and na- 
tion, which have never been heard of, or are nothing now % 
And how many, though designated perpetual, are ever van- 
ishing away like bubbles on the ocean 1 But the declaration 
that the covenant of the Lord with Abraham and with his 
then unborn son was to be everlasting, is now, after the lapse 
of thirty-eight centuries, a strong confirmation that it was 
the covenant of Him who changeth not, and with whom all 
things are possible ; for who but God, setting up the very 
name as a witness that it was then deemed incredible, could 
have said that it would have lasted till now 1 And to that 
covenant in that selfsame day, as may here be passingly 
noted, there was affixed a perpetual seal, which, throughout 
all intervening ages, has set apart the seed of Abraham from 
the uncircumcised Gentiles. ^ 

While the Arabs, the descendants of Ishmael, the eldest 
son of Abraham, " armed against mankind," have ever main- 
tained their prophetic character, and still continue unsub- 
dued and wild, till " Kedar's wilderness afar" shall make its 
voice to be heard in the harmonious symphony of all na- 
tions, the name of Ishmael, i. e., the Lord shall hear* testifies 
to the fact that, when his mother, Hagar, harshly dealt with 
by the envious Sarai, fled from her face, and sat houseless, 
disconsolate, and forlorn by a fountain of water in the wil-* 

* Genesis xvi., \\ % 
K 



110 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

derness, the fountain in the way of Shur, the Lord heard her 
affliction, and named, by his angel, her yet unborn son, and 
there gave the promise which he has fulfilled, in despite of 
all the efforts of Persians, Grecians, Romans, Moguls, and 
Tartars, who in vain have sought to subjugate the seed of 
Ishmael. And as the promise has thus its proofs that it was 
given by the Lord, the name of Ishmael testifies that the 
Lord did hear when a friendless and lonely outcast cried at 
a fountain in a wilderness ; and that fountain had from 
thence its name — Beer-lahai-roi, i. e., the well of him that liv- 
eth and seeth me* — and thus became another witness or me- 
morial of the fact, to be added to the name of Ishmael. 

The name of Beer-sheba, the well of the oath, brings us back 
to witness, in all the simplicity of patriarchal times, the cov- 
enant between Abraham and Abimelech.f There, where 
Abraham planted a grove, Isaac built a city, which was long 
famous in Israel as forming the termination of Judea on the 
south, and which subsisted under the same name, at least, 
till the fifth century of our era ; J and the name, yet marking 
the spot, is still a memorial of that covenant which itself 
was to last but for three generations. 

Abraham left not the mountain where his hand was stay- 
ed, after it was stretched forth to slay his son, without con- 
secrating the place, by a new name, to the glory of God, who 
had provided a burnt- offering in the stead of Isaac — Jehovah- 
jireh, the Lord will provide. 

In desolate Edom we see the proofs that the judgments 
pronounced against the Edomites, because of their hatred 
against the children of Israel, were indeed of God : and in 
the very name of Edom, i. e., red, therefore given unto 
Esau,§ we see the colour of the dear-bought mess for which 
he forfeited the birthright he despised ; and the line of prom- 
ise was transferred from him, when wilfully renounced, to 
his younger brother. 

The name of Zoar, little, which long subsisted as a town 
after the great and guilty cities of the plain were buried in 
the waters of the Dead Sea, is a comment on the words of 
Lot as he fled from the impending destruction. This city is 
near to flee unto, and it is a little one ; therefore the name 
of the city was called Zoar.]| 

As the land and cities of Moab, desolate and broken down, 
plainly show at present that the prophets of Israel literally 
foretold their fate, so the name of Moab, i. e., of the father, 
has ever told as plainly in its literal significancy the incestu- 
ous origin of the son of Lot, who was the father of the Mo- 
abites.*j[ 

* Genesis xvi., 14. t Ibid, xxi., 27-32. J Hieron, t. iii., 174. 
§ Genesis xxv., 30. || Ibid, xix., 20-22. 1 Ibid, xviii., 37. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. Ill 

Neither diversity of condition, nor change of place, nor 
distance of time, has obliterated the marks by which the 
Jews were distinguished as a peculiar people, and even the 
fashion of their countenance testifies the common origin of 
the Hebrew race. The family likeness of the seed of Ja- 
cob is clearly traceable between the Israelitish bondsmen in 
the days of Pharaoh, and the Israelitish creditors of Euro- 
pean kingdoms in the present day ; and their fate in every 
age and in every land, as foretold by the prophets, is of itself 
a standing miracle. And, in like manner, the history of the 
father of the twelve tribes of Israel is not only recorded in 
scripture with all the precision of a tale of yesterday, but 
names which are as familiar as those of a friend, or of the 
place of our habitation, may serve to set the chief facts of 
that history before us. 

Whether at his birth he took his twin but elder brother by 
the heel, or in his manhood supplanted him and obtained 
from his father the blessing of the firstborn, as indicated' by 
the name of Jacob,* signifying both the heel and he that 
supplanteth, even as his race, according to express predic- 
tions and to fact, has supplanted and survived that of Esau ; 
or whether the childless Jacob, then a houseless wanderer, 
in danger of his life, having fled from the face of his angry 
brother, lay down at night to sleep, with nothing but the 
earth for his couch and a stone for his pillow, and saw in 
his dream a ladder set up on the earth but reaching to heaven, 
and saw the Lord stand above it, and heard the promise that 
he, the God of Abraham and of Isaac, would give to him and 
to his seed the land whereon he lay, and that his seed should 
be as the dust of the earth, as still they are ; and that he 
should spread abroad to the east and to the west, to the north 
and to the south, as they have been ; and that in his seed all 
the families of the earth should be blessed, as now they may ; 
and Jacob, awaking, said, This is none other than the house 
of God, and set up the stone for a pillar, and poured oil on it, 
and called the name of that place Bethel, i. e., the house of 
God,\ whence originated that celebrated city and everlasting 
name : whether he made a covenant with Laban, and de- 
sired his brethren to take stones and make a heap, and call- 
ed it Galeed, or the heap of ivitness,% as a witness between 
them ; or, appealing to the Lord to watch between them, he 
called it Mizpah, i. e., the watch-tower,^ as the city of that 
name more than the heap did in future ages testify, and as 
the history of his race and the yet auspicious prophecies 
respecting them bear witness that the Lord is the watch- 
tower of Israel : whether, on his return to Canaan, the an- 

* Gen. xxv., 26. f Ibid, xxvii., 18, 19. 

\ Ibid, xxxi., 48. § Ibid, xxxi., 49. 



112 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

gels of the Lord met him on his way, and he called the name 
of that place — also in after ages a city long famous in Is- 
rael — Mahanaim, or two hosts ;* or whether, soon after the 
Lord appeared unto him, on his again settling in that land 
after an absence of many years, and said unto him, Thy 
name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, i. e., a prince 
of God,\ shall thy name be, for as a prince hast thou power 
with God and with men, and hast prevailed: whether he 
called the name of that place Peniel, i. e., the face of God,% 
because he had there seen God face to face ; or bought, as 
his first purchase in Canaan, a parcel of a field near to She- 
chem, and erected there an altar, and called it El-eloi-israel, 
God the God of Israel :§ whether, on journeying to Succoth, 
he built him a house and made booths for his cattle, he 
therefore called the name of the place Succoth, or booths ;|| 
or, removing to Bethel to dwell there, he built an altar and 
called it El-bethel, the God of Bethel : ^f whether twelve sons 
were born to Jacob or two to Joseph, all of whom were fa- 
thers of the tribes of Israel, the name of each had a signifi- 
cant appellation : whether Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, died 
and was buried under an oak, and the name of it was called 
Allon-bachuth, i. e., the oak of weeping ;** or whether the em- 
balmed body of Jacob, as we read in the last chapter of Gen- 
esis, was brought up from Egypt to be buried in Canaan by 
Joseph and his brethren, accompanied by all the elders of the 
land of Egypt, who mourned with a great and very sore 
lamentation for seven days at the floor of Atad, and the Ca- 
naanites called the name of the place Abel-mizraim, or the 
mourning of the Egyptians ;ff each of these events, besides 
being committed to a written record, had an express and ap- 
propriate designation in the literal significancy of the names 
which still represent or describe them. The sites of cities 
in Israel marked the wanderings, and their names told the 
chief acts of Jacob, the father of the fathers of its tribes. 
And while the facts which these names set forth are guaran- 
tied by their association with the repeated renewal to Ja- 
cob of the covenant of the Lord with Abraham and Isaac, 
and with prophecies hitherto accomplished, and while it re- 
mains yet to be seen, whenever the " set time" shall be 
come, that the Lord did give the name of Israel unto Jacob, 
and that, at the last, as at the first, it is he who, as a prince of 
God, shall prevail with God and with men,- we may look back 
to the days of his pilgrimage on earth as it is recorded in 
the Bible, and see, in the history of Jacob, how the names 
of persons and of places were the constituted memorials or 

* Gen. xxxii., 2. t lb. xxxii., 28. t lb. xxxii., 30. 

§ lb. xxxiii., 20. || lb. xxxiii., 17. If lb. xxxv., 7, 

** lb. 'xxxv., 8, ft lb. 1., 11. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 113 

testimonials of facts, in a manner or to a degree unparallel- 
ed, we will say, in the history of all other men, from the 
creation of the world to the present hour. 

Moses, a name familiar to all, is not without its significancy, 
but plainly tells us that the leader and legislator of Israel was 
once a helpless babe drawn out of the waters,* for such — 
drawn out — is the literal meaning of the word. At the time 
when the children of Israel increased abundantly, and multi- 
plied, and waxed exceeding great in the land of Egypt, and 
a new king arose who knew not Joseph, not only were task- 
masters set over them to afflict them with their burdens — as 
a picture shows — but Pharaoh commanded that every son 
that was born among them should be cast into the river. And, 
as the name imports, one drawn out of the river by Pharaoh's 
daughter, and hence so named, avenged on the King of Egypt 
and his host the wrongs of Israel. Of his two sons, the name 
of the one was Gershom, i. e., a " stranger here,"f and the other 
Eliezer, i. e., my God an help,% expressly denote how he was 
a stranger in the land of Midian, and how his God was an 
help and delivered him out of the hand of Pharaoh. The 
prophets declared of old that the Lord will yet lift up a stand- 
ard for his people Israel, and will help and deliver them from 
the hand of their enemies ; and when the first of the nations 
that fought for the first time against the Israelites were dis- 
comfited while Moses lifted up his rod, he erected there an 
altar, and called it Jehovah-Nissi, i. e., the Lord my banner. § 
Though places in the desert, Mass ah, signifying temptation ; 
Meribah, chiding or strife ;\\ Taberah, burning ,*^[ and Kibroth- 
hattavah, or the graves of them that lusted** became responsive 
to the memorable scriptural facts, that the Israelites tempted 
the Lord ; that they did chide or strive with his servant Mo- 
ses ; that in the fierce anger of the Lord many of them were 
burned; and that, after they had gotten the meat for which 
they lusted, a great plague came upon them, and turned the 
place of their repast into a field of graves. After the desert, 
from the long wandering of the Israelites, had merited the 
name it still bears, the altered name of Joshua^] i. e., the Sa- 
viour, more worthily applied than that of Ptolemy Soter, des- 
ignates the man who led them into Canaan, and planted the 
wanderers in the land of promise. 

While there is abundant proof that Judea, though long deso- 
late, was once a land of vines, the name of Eschol, a cluster of 
grapes,%% marked to ages, then future, the brook or valley from 
whence a branch with a cluster of grapes was brought by 
the spies in token of the fertility of the Land of Promise, so 

* Exodus ii., 10. t lb. ii., 22. % lb. xviii., 4. 

£ lb. xvii.. 15. II lb. xvii., 7. f Num. xi., 3. 

** Num.xi., 34. ft lb. xiii., 16. %% lb. xiii.,24, 

K 2 



114 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

soon as the wandering Israelites first approached its borders. 
When the iniquity of the Amorites was full, Hormah* i. e., 
utter destruction, was the new name of the monumental city, 
that needed no inscription to tell the utter destruction of the 
Canaanites and their cities. Cities of Israel .arose where 
the pilgrim Jacob had journeyed ; .and new cities, with new 
names, were built where those of the Canaanites had stood. 
To this day, as Burckhardt relates, and as every traveller 
sees, " The ruins of Eleale, Heshbon, Meon, Medabon, Dibon, 
Aroer, still subsist to illustrate the history of the Bern-Israel." 
And while their ruins testify that the word of prophecy is sure, 
the same Hebrew names attached to each spot illustrate the 
history of their origin. " And the children of Gad built Dibon 
and Aroer, Sfc. And the children of Reuben built Heshbon, 
and Elealeh, and Nebo, and Balmeon {their names being chan- 
ged), and gave other names unto the cities ivhich they builded. 
And Jair, the son of Manasseh, went and took the small towns 
of Qilead, and called them Havoth-jair. And Nobah went and 
took Kenath, and the villages thereof, and called it Nobah, after 
his own name"\ No sooner, as it is recorded, was the Jor- 
dan passed, twelve stones set up for a memorial, and the 
children of Israel circumcised a second time, and the re- 
proach of Egypt rolled away, as the Lord said unto Joshua, 
than, according to the word, the still well-known name of 
Gilgal, i.e.,r oiling, % was given unto the place of the first en- 
campment in Judea of the victorious Israelites, who afore- 
time were despised bondsmen in the land of Egypt. "While 
a mark was set from the beginning on the first cities of Is- 
rael, times yet future are destined to bear testimony to the 
predicted fact, that the desolations of many generations shall 
be raised up, and that they shall all be the cities of Israel 
again, and for ever. And the w r ord has thus a witness in it- 
self for more than a hundred generations. That judgments 
have fallen on the Jews and on their land because of their 
iniquities, all these facts and all the features of their land 
give proof. And that trouble, from the first, came on Israel 
when there was an Achan in the camp, the valley of Achor, 
i. e., trouble,^ from that time forjh was an enduring memorial. 
And the name of Bochim, i. e., weeping,^ designated the place 
where the children of Israel lifted up their voices and wept 
when, charged with disobedience and threatened with pun- 
ishment, they were told that the inhabitants of the land whom 
they had not driven out would be a sore in their sides and 
a snare unto their souls. 

The place where Samson was avenged of the Philistines 
afterward witnessed by its name Lehi, a jawbone,^ by how 

* Num. xxi., 3. Judges i., 17. f Num. xxxii., 34-42. % Josh, v., 9. 
§ Josh, vii., 26. j| Judges ii., 1, if lb. xv., 9. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 115 

slender an instrument deliverance was wrought to Israel ; 
and Ramath-lehi, the casting aivay of the jawbone * still more 
significantly marked the place where it was cast away. 

Though the lips of Hannah spake not, while in her heart 
she prayed that she might have a son, the name of Samuel 
literally tells that he was asked of God.\ 

Many days and years, as the prophets foretold and be- 
wailed, have the daughters of Judah trembled and lamented, 
and the whole house of Israel has long remained without 
ephod, teraphim, or sacrifice. And the name of Ichabod% — 
there is no glory — shows that of old there was a time when 
grief for the loss of the ark of the Lord prevailed in the 
heart of a mother in Israel over that for the death of a hus- 
band, and would not be allayed by the birth of a son; to 
whom her last words, at his first breath, gave that memora- 
ble and melancholy name. 

But Israel's help can come only from Him who is mighty 
to save as to smite. And when the man, whose name im- 
ports that he was asked of God, having gathered Israel to- 
gether, saw their enemies again flee before them, he wrote 
the fact upon the spot where he stood by erecting a pillar 
and calling it by the name — ever endeared to every Christian 
as to any Jew — Ebenezer, the stone of help^ in grateful and 
enduring memorial that the Lord had helped him. 

The earliest portion of scriptural history being full of sig- 
nificant names, is thus corroborated by manifold memorials, 
such as no other history, to an equal or comparable degree, 
ever possessed. The names of persons and of places need 
but to be translated, as in the margin of the Bible, to an- 
nounce or intimate the facts from which they originated. 
Each name has its meaning, and was the representation of a 
fact. The land of Judea was studded with memorials ; and 
the most prominent events in the early history of the He- 
brew race were told, generation after generation, by renown- 
ed names, of which no Israelite could have been ignorant, 
and which none could have falsely imposed in after ages upon 
any people, as those of their patriarchal forefathers or ru- 
lers, or those of the cities which they knew, or in which they 
themselves did dwell. What stronger proofs of ancient facts 
are to be found than that cities, as living witnesses, should 
have declared or confirmed them by their very names ! But 
if such credentials of Israelitish history be sought for, they 
are supplied by existing memorials that have been spread 
throughout the world. Positive institutions or rites were 
also ordained to be observed in every generation, as express 
memorials of the wonders which the Lord wrought in Israel. 

♦'Judges xv., 17. 1 1 Samuel i., 20. 

% 1 Samuel iv., 21, <j lb. vii., lg, 



116 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

His everlasting covenant was not without an enduring seal. 
His work was not left without a witness on earth ; but or- 
dinances were established to perpetuate its remembrance ; 
even as the spirit of prophecy stamped his word as divine, 
and has given to his judgments a visible manifestation. 

The novelty of the preceding topic (so far as known to 
the writer), as forming a connected testimony, though too 
obvious in repeated instances to escape the notice of com- 
mentators, may be a plea for the tediousness with which it 
has been treated ; if, after all, it be not too briefly touched on. 
But the admirable and well-known treatise of Leslie, to 
which every reader is here specially referred, may well limit, 
to the narrowest bounds, the consideration of the evidence 
deduced from the Mosaic institutions, the laws, ordinances, 
and memorials that were established in Israel. 

After the lapse of more than two centuries, a mere holy- 
day in England, without any commemorative institution, is 
sufficient, on the return of the 5th of November, to recall the 
fact of the Gunpowder Plot, with as little doubt of its re- 
ality as if the day of its last anniversary had been its date. 
The martyrdom of Charles I. and the restoration of his son, 
though events which many now slightly regard, are set forth 
as facts, year by year continually, on the return of a par- 
tially recognised holyday. Public customs readily become 
the habit of a people, and assume the power of a law. But, 
the sacred ordinances of baptism and the Lord's supper alone 
excepted, there is no parallel in our land, nor, in some re- 
spects, in any other, to those ordinances which were en- 
joined in the Mosaic law, and have been actually observed by 
the Jews to this day, or for a period of more than three 
thousand years after their institution, and nearly eighteen 
hundred years since that people have been scattered among 
all nations of the earth. 

Circumcision was a token of the covenant between the 
Lord and Abraham. My covenant, saith the Lord, shall be in 
your flesh for an everlasting covenant* and each circumcised 
child bears through life that " token of the covenant." The 
passover was instituted as commemorative of the deliverance 
of Israel from Egyptian bondage ; and as the blood of the 
Lamb was for a token upon the houses where they were, and 
the Lord passed over them, and the plague ivas not upon them to 
destroy them,\ so the lamb slain year by year continually in 
the families of Israel while they remained in Judea, where 
alone sacrifices were to be offered up, and all the peculiar 
observances of the passover, were, for many ages, memori- 
als of the great deliverance which God wrought for Israel 
on that selfsame day on which the passover was kept. The 

* Gen. xvii., 13, \ Exod. xii., 13, 14, 17, 



OP THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 117 

feast of weeks or of pentecost was instituted on the giving 
of the law. And the third great annual festival of the Jews 
was the feast of tabernacles, during which* all that were 
Israelites born had to dwell in booths seven days, that all 
their generations might know that the Lord made the chil- 
dren of Israel to dwell in booths when he brought them out 
of the land of Egypt. 

Each of these feasts was u a holy convocation," at which 
all the males had to present themselves before the Lord. 
Though the Jews observed not the weightier matters of the 
law, judgment, mercy, and faith, they tithed mint, anise, and 
cummin, and were not, while a united people, and are not 
yet, though scattered among all nations, unobservant of the 
festivals enjoined in the law of Moses, so far as according to 
that law these can yet be kept. The more punctiliously that 
they regarded the ritual ordinances of the law, while they 
looked to it for righteousness, they confirmed the testimony 
the more. And while every man and male child of the He- 
brew race bears in his body the " token of the covenant" 
which the Lord made with Abraham, every Jewish festival 
observed to this day, after the extinction of a hundred gener- 
ations, is a memorial of the fact, in confirmation of which 
it was ordained as an ordinance for ever. 

It is recorded that on the selfsame day in which the 
names of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac were given by the 
Lord, circumcision was instituted. And that on the self- 
same day in which the Israelites were delivered from bond- 
age in Egypt, the passover was instituted and observed. And 
could the children of Israel in any after age have been per- 
suaded that they and their forefathers, from the days of Abra- 
ham, had been circumcised, if such had not been the fact 1 
Could a nation at any future period be persuaded that they 
had lived under laws and observed institutions which they 
had never heard of or known'? Could the passover and 
other ordinances have been observed and perpetuated from 
age to age, if they had not been instituted at the time, and 
under the circumstances which Scripture records 1 Or how 
could they have been instituted at the first, if the facts in 
which they originated, and of which they were commemo- 
rative, had not been seen and believed on at the time ? Were 
the Israelites to be told, if the fact had not been true, that 
they had heard wailings for the firstborn in every Egyptian 
family while the Lord passed over them (as the name pass- 
over indicates), and there was not in Israel one mother who 
wept for her child 1 Were they to be told that they had 
passed through the Red Sea as on dry ground, while all the 
host of Egypt was destroyed, if they had not seen with their 

* Lev, xxiii, 42, 43. 



118 tHE AUTHENTICITY 

eyes, as Moses appealed to them, the wonders which the 
Lord had wrought in the midst of them 1 Did a whole peo- 
ple commemorate, at first, a national deliverance such as ne- 
cessarily implied that every individual~experienced it, but 
which never took place ? Have hundreds of millions of 
Jews, throughout successive generations, borne the token of 
a covenant which never existed 1 " Was there ever a book 
of sham laws which were not the laws of the nation, palmed 
upon any people since the world began 1 If not, with what 
face can Deists say this of the books of the law of the Jews? 
Why will they say that of them which they confess impos- 
sible among any nation or any people ?"* The demonstra- 
tion of the fallacy of such allegations may best be found in 
the reductio ad absurdum, or resolving them into an absurdity. 
It has been alleged that the " Bible was presented to us by 
a barbarous and ignorant people, and was written in an age 
when they were yet more barbarous." Whence, then, came 
the only theocracy — the only unmixed theism — the only re- 
ligion, may we not say, on earth during many ages, in which 
the only living and true God was worshipped, and human 
sacrifices never burned or bled 1 By what rude hand of bar- 
barous man was ever a pure, enlightened, and comprehen- 
sive moral code or decalogue written, like that of the two 
tables of stone which Moses cast down and brake at the 
sight of an act of idolatry in Israel ? How would the most 
barbarous among any of its tribes have blasphemed the Holy 
One of Israel, and renounced their faith, by mingling in the 
idolatrous and impure orgies or festivals, and rites reputed 
sacred, wherewith the gods of the heathens were honoured 
among the most civilized, as well as savage, nations of the 
earth? Whether does a barbarous age, as respects religion, 
lay better claim to the temple-worship of Jerusalem, or to 
the saturnalia of Greece and Rome, and their imitation still 
throughout great part of Europe, under the auspices of the 
latter city 1 If an age or people are to be reprobated as bar- 
barous in a religious and moral sense, let Judea, in the days 
of Joshua and the precepts of the law, which every father 
had to teach unto his children, stand up in judgment to con- 
demn Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, and the authorized 
" commandments of the (Romish) Church," in which thou- 
sands are instructed, if instructed at all, in the nineteenth 
century. W T ho, in the whole world and throughout many 
ages, stood erect before an idol but Israelites alone ? What 
other people was ever stigmatized by idolatrous nations as 
impious, because of their hatred of idolatry, and of the truth 
and purity of their creed, as all science confirms, and all na- 
ture ratines it, " The Lord our God is one Lord, besides whom 

* Leslie's Short Method with the Deists, 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 119 

there is no GodV Of what other people does any ancient 
geographer or historian speak as Strabo speaks of the ex- 
clusive purity of the worship practised by Moses and his fol- 
lowers, who went forth from Egypt to establish their faith 
in Canaan ? What other people have ever been set apart 
from the nations as the custodiaries of the law, the testi- 
mony, and the oracles of truth, the writings of those prophets, 
before whose word the mightiest nations have disappeared 
and the greatest cities have fallen ? And in what other book, 
confirmed by past history and existing facts as the word of 
the living God, could the promise of a Messiah have been 
given, but in the Bible alone ! 

Do our adversaries twit us with the incredibility of the 
" arbitrary choice of one people as the favourites of Heaven," 
we bid them read the history of that people in ages past, and 
look to them as they are, and say if the God of Israel be a 
respecter of persons. And have they never heard or read 
that, before Abraham was circumcised or Isaac was born, 
the promise was given that in him all the families of the 
earth shall be blessed 1 And have other nations to complain 
that Abraham's seed was set apart from the beginning to be 
a blessing to them all 1 If a wild olive-tree be grafted in 
among the natural branches, and partake of the root and fat- 
ness of the good olive-tree, has it reason to murmur against 
the branches that have been broken off that it might be graft- 
ed in 1 Was Jacob " two flocks" on returning to Jordan, 
which he had passed with his staff in his hand ? It was be- 
cause the Lord had prospered him, though Laban had dealt 
deceitfully with him, and had changed his wages ten times. 
Was Canaan the lot of the inheritance of the Israelites, and 
were its inhabitants rooted out before them % It was not till 
the iniquity of the Amorites was full ; and even then a guilty 
Achan in the camp paralyzed the strength and stayed the 
victories of Israel. Was the youngest son of Jesse, while 
a pious shepherd in Bethlehem, chosen, as a man after God's 
own heart, to be king over Israel ] Once was he dispos- 
sessed of his throne, and became a wanderer in his king 
dom ; and, again, destruction before his enemies, or the fam 
ine, or the pestilence, was the only choice that w T as given 
him, because of his iniquity. Judgments came down upon 
the chosen of the Lord for deeds such as those for which 
the gods of the heathen were glorified. And here, as in all 
things else, it is manifest that the Holy One of Israel is the 
Lord. 

But even when Jerusalem was destroyed, and the land smit- 
ten with a curse, and the prince of the people, w T ho, accord 
ing to the same sure word of prophecy, did come and tri 
umph over the ruin of the Jewish dispensation, the testimony 
was preserved while many prophecies were fulfilled j the 



120 THE AUTHENTICITY 

sacred memorials of Israelite sh history, and symbols of* a 
preached gospel, and of a light that alone could enlighten the 
nations, were taken from the temple of Jerusalem to be car- 
ried in procession before the conqueror, and were sculptured 
in a yet enduring testimony on the Arch of Titus. 



SECTION TV, 

The subject of the genuineness of the Old Testament Scrip 
tures might suffice to fill volumes with superabundant illus- 
trations. But in closing this brief survey — composed of frag- 
ments — which may serve to show the fulness of the matter, 
as a single cluster of grapes shows the goodliness of the land, 
it may not be unprofitable to some that we touch on another 
topic, to which our adversaries lead us in search of new tes- 
timonials of the truths which they assail ; and in respect to 
which, instead of the barrenness they look for, they may find, 
on the very spot, the richness of the earth and the dew of 
heaven from above, and plants which the Lord's right hand 
alone could have planted. 

Skeptics, like Hume, were wont, in former days, to hold 
in derision the scriptural record of creation as necessarily 
fictitious, the event described being absolutely and incontest- 
ably beyond the reach of human experience or observation, 
as any event could possibly or conceivably be. But facts, it 
seems, are now resorted to ; and in this philosophical age, 
which has itself given birth to ephemeral cosmogonies that 
are already forgotten, the Mosaic account of the creation, 
after having survived so long, must needs be disproved and 
dissipated by geological discoveries ! 

* " Some drill and bore 

The earth, and from the strata there 
Extract a register by which we learn 
That he who made it, and revealed its date 
To Moses, was mistaken in its age." 

Cowper. 

The satire may be just, though some may not own it as 
philosophical. But, since the days of Cowper, the science 
of geology, truly such, has risen from infancy with a rapidity 
which promises an early manhood. And when of full age, 
its full testimony may be given. So soon as the existence 
of fossil bones could no longer be denied, skeptics, who be- 
fore derided their existence, then sought their aid, and claimed 
geology as their own. And now, after all its advancement — 
as the writer lately witnessed in the midst of the fossil re- 
mains collected by Cuvier— a youthful sage shakes his head 



£ ^ 

> c 

■4 .-.- 




Fl.l. 




Pill. 




OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 121 

at the sight of a huge bone disentombed from an old world, 
and, when asked how the fact accords with the narrative of 
Moses, answers with a sneer. But the Mosaic account in- 
cludes the creation of the heavens and of the earth, and our 
appeal from a false verdict or a senseless sneer may be made 
alike to them both. 

The days of astrology, which was suited to monks and 
akin to legendary tales, are past, and those of astronomy are 
come, in which the velocity of light is measured, and the mo- 
tions of satellites, unseen by the naked eye, are marked to 
a moment, as accurately as the eclipses of the sun or of the 
moon. And the telescope in the hands of the Herschels has 
subjected to the inspection of man new firmaments of stars, 
and many hundreds of nebula, or luminous masses of mat- 
ter, spread over the illimitable void of space in avast variety 
of forms, compared to which our solar s)^stem is scarcely a 
point, and the starry heavens, of which that is a unit, is but 
one of the unnumbered works of God. In their multitudin- 
ous, varied, and progressive forms, they seem to show that 
it may yet be said by Him whose name is the Word of God, 
" My Father worketh hitherto and I work. In my Father's 
house there are many mansions. And places are preparing 
still." 

In ages comparatively not remote, men, in their fancy, 
sought for an Atlas, an elephant, or a tortoise on which to 
rest the earth ; but the Bible, in the first book, perhaps, that 
was ever written, declared that the Lord stretched out the 
north over the empty space, and hangeth the earth upon no- 
thing.* Natural philosophy has newly discovered that " there 
is a wisdom which presides over the least as well as the 
greatest things, and an omniscience which not only numbers 
and names the stars, but even the atoms that compose them." 
But from the beginning it was declared in the word of God, 
that "he maketh the weight for the winds, and weigheth the 
waters by measure." And secrets of nature, as well as the 
destiny of nations, were known to the prophets of a people 
despised as barbarous. " Who hath measured the waters in 
the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, 
and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and 
weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance 1 
Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or, being his coun- 
sellor, hath taught him 1 Behold, the nations are as a drop 
of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the bal- 
ance. All nations before him are as nothing, and they are 
counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. Have ye not 
known ? have ye not heard 1 hath it not been told you from 
the beginning 1 have ye not understood/rom the foundations of 

* Job xxx vi., 7. 
L 



122 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

the earth ? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, 
and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers ; that streteh- 
eth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as 
a tent to dwell in ; that bringeth the princes to nothing : he 
maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. He shall blow 
upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall 
take them away as stubble. Lift up your eyes on high, and 
behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their 
host by number ; he calleth them all by names, by the great- 
ness of his might, for he is strong in power ; not one fail- 
eth.* By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens. Lo, these 
are parts of his ways; but how little a portion is heard of 
him] but the thunder of his power who can understand ?"f 
"Praise ye him, sun and moon; praise him, all ye stars of 
light ; Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that 
he above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord ; 
for he commanded, and they were created."! 

Far as the telescope can reach, the word of the Lord, in 
describing the power and perfections of Jehovah, goes before 
it, and describes what it cannot discern. And high as history 
can ascend, the Bible rises higher, till it gives men to under- 
stand the order in which God laid the foundations of the 
earth. And having seen by inspecting ruins, and heard by 
interrogating them, how each is a manifestation of the truth 
of his word, and answers to its prophetic text, and shows 
that he brings princes to nothing, and that kingdoms before 
his word are as chaff before the whirlwind, may we not also 
lift up our eyes and see, and " interrogate the heavens," and 
ask whether the analogy of nature does not give " concur- 
ring testimony" to that which hath been told from the begin- 
ning, and which, from the record put into our hands, might 
have been understood from the foundations of the earth ? And 
beholding what philosophers, worthy of the name, have ex- 
hibited to our sight, and what the telescope sets forth to the 
view of every observer, may not plate after plate be set par- 
allel with the first words of the Bible, as verse after verse is 
descriptive of the creation of the heavens and the earth, the 
sun, the moon, and the stars which we see, and the globe 
which we inhabit 1 And may we not see whether those very 
things are not now visibly true of other firmaments which the 
Bible reveals concerning the formation of our own'? 

In treating this theme in the briefest manner, the reader is 
specially referred to the Philosophical Transactions, partic- 
ularly for the years 1811, 1814, 1828, and 1833, and to Nich- 
olas Architecture of the Heavens, to which work the writer is 
indebted for the facts and discoveries which supply the illus- 
trations, as well as for the plates. The design of the philo- 

* Isa. xL, 12-26. f Job xxvi., 13, 14. % Psal. cxlviii., 3-5. 



Of THE OLt) TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 1£3 

sophical writers was purely scientific. And their testimony 
to the facts, which any one may not only examine, but witness, 
is therefore divested of all suspicion of having been given 
with any design of illustrating the Mosaic record of the cre- 
ation, to which they have not hitherto made any reference 
or allusion. The plates alone, without any comment, illus- 
trate the respective texts. But a few notes, explanatory of 
these modern discoveries, may be affixed, which may farther 
tend to show that astronomers, however unconsciously, are 
privileged to illustrate the word of God, as well as to lay 
open to view, in the most extended sphere, the wonders 
of creation. And their discoveries, or the facts which they 
have disclosed with wonderful minuteness and unwearied in- 
dustry, need only to be simply appropriated and applied in 
order to form illustrations of the inspiration of Scripture 
scarcely less conclusive or complete than those which geog- 
raphers have supplied. 

It is worthy of remark, that, towards the close of last 
century, while infidelity was rampant and phantasms abound- 
ed, travellers were gleaning facts in Palestine and other 
countries ; geologists raising them from the bowels of the 
earth ; and astronomers bringing them down from heaven ; 
and truth was thus preparing its avengements on error. 
Nearly fifty years have elapsed since the elder Herschel be- 
gan his observations and discoveries, which the scientific 
world has hitherto chiefly monopolized, and which Dr. Nichol 
has newly presented to the public in a popular, interesting, 
and accessible form. The subject itself is thus not a novel 
one. In commencing his admirable treatise,* as it may be 
termed, detailing his astronomical observations relating to 
the construction of the heavens, the purpose of which was 
to throw new light upon the organization of the celestial bod- 
ies, Sir William Herschel states that a knowledge of the 
construction of the heavens had always been the ultimate object 
of his observations, in which he had been for many years en- 
gaged in applying his forty, twenty, and large ten feet tele- 
scopes, of great space-penetrating power. And most ably 
was his purpose fulfilled of u arranging these objects," which 
by such telescopes he discovered, " in a certain successive 
regular order," that they might be viewed in a new light. 
That light is now clear where previously all was compara- 
tively, if not absolutely, dark and unknown. Sir John Her- 
schel, with hereditary talent and zeal, has finished in the 
northern hemisphere what his illustrious father began. Nor 
do their names stand alone as surveyors of the heavens. 
The Brisbane observatory was not inactive in the southern 
hemisphere, whither Sir John Herschel went to complete his 

* Philosophical Trans., 1811. 



124 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY 

observations, after having presented the scientific world with 
a detailed list of two thousand five hundred nebulae and clus- 
ters of stars. 

None the least versant in the rudiments of astronomy 
can doubt that our sun ranks in the order of the stars. And 
as a knowledge of the construction of the heavens, from num- 
berless observations of existing objects, has been the ulti- 
mate purpose to which astronomers have so successfully de- 
voted many years, ample means are prepared for instituting 
a comparison between the result of their discoveries and the 
only record of the creation of the heavens and the earth to 
which a philosopher or any man of sense would now attach 
a shadow of credibility. 

By assorting, in thirty-four distinct articles, those astro- 
nomical objects to which his observations were devoted, Sir 
William clearly showed " the most gradual affinity between 
the individuals contained in any one class with those con- 
tained in that which precedes and that which follows it," so 
that from thence their " nature and construction" may be suc- 
cessively seen, from the most diffused nebulosity, occupying 
a space of inconceivable extent, to a luminous point or star. 
" It will be found," as he states, " that those contained in one 
article are so closely allied to those in the next, that there 
is, perhaps, not so much difference, if I may use the compari- 
son, as there would be in an annual description of the hu- 
man figure, were it given from the birth of a child till he 
comes to be a man in his prime."* 

Such being the result of astronomical observations, may we 
not compare the account of the construction of the heavens, 
or that which is discovered and seen eighteen centuries af- 
ter the Christian era, with that which was written fifteen cen- 
turies before it ? Can any analogy be traced, or is any simi- 
larity apparent, on comparing the " construction of the heav- 
ens," as described by Herschel, and the creation of the heav- 
ens, as recorded by Moses 1 Is there any analogy, from first 
to last, between the respective accounts of the same sub- 
ject 1 And as skeptics have condemned the Mosaic account, 
may not the " observations of the heavens" confirm it to our 
sight 1 

The first of the articles with which Herschel begins his 
classification of astronomical objects, as exhibiting the rudest 
or first form in which matter is to be seen, is entitled, " Of 
extensive diffused Nebulosity." 

And the first words of the Bible are, 

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 
And the earth was ' without form and void; and darkness was 
upon the face of the deep : And the Spirit of God moved 

* Philosoph, Trans, for 1811, p. 271, 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 125 

upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be 
light, and there was light, Gen. i., 1-3. (See plate I.) 

" In the first and rudest state, the nebulous matter is char- 
acterized by great diffusion. The milky light is spread over 
a large space so equably, that scarcely any peculiarity of con- 
stitution or arrangement can be perceived. The perfectly 
chaotic modification here illustrated is. perhaps the nearest 
to the original state of this matter of anything now remain- 
ing in the firmament."* " By nebulous matter," says Sir W. 
Herschel, " I mean to denote that substance, or, rather, those 
substances which give out light, whatever may be their na- 
ture, or of whatever different forms they may be possessed."! 

After giving a table of fifty-two extensive nebulosities, 
with an account of each, he remarks that, " when these ob- 
servations are examined with a view to improve our knowl- 
edge of the construction of the heavens, we see, in the first 
place, that extensive diffused nebulosity is exceedingly great 
indeed ; for the account of it, as stated in the table, is 151.7 
square degrees ; but this, it must be remembered, gives us 
by no means the real limit of it, neither in the parallel nor 
in the meridian ; moreover, the dimensions in the table give 
only its superficial extent; the depth may be far beyond the 
reach of our telescopes ; and it will be evident that the 
abundance of nebulous matter diffused through such an ex- 
pansion of the heavens must exceed all imagination. "J 
These nebulosities, like many nebulae, are of an " irregular 
figure" or " unshapen masses of nebulous matter." The neb- 
ulous matter is compared by Herschel to a " curdling liquid;" 
and it is described as a " shining fluid," " a nebulous fluid 
shining of itself ;"§ and the first, or incipient form in which it 
is described, as in plate 1, and "in all the other numbers re- 
ferred to," is that of a "diffused milky nebulosity."|| 

Such is " the first and rudest state" in which matter is 
seen by telescopes of the highest poAver. In the beginning 
(the period is wholly undefined) God created the heavens and 
the earth. And the earth ivas without form and void, like " void, 
formless, and diffused" nebulous matter now. Darkness was 
upon the face of the deep. The depth of the nebulosities may 
be far beyond the reach of our telescopes. " The breadth 
and depth of the nebulous matter are probably not very dif- 
ferent." It is described as fluid, or liquid, or vaporous, not 
in a consolidated form : And it was on the face of the wa- 
ters that the Spirit moved, even as these, not then gathered 

* Nicholas Architecture of the Heavens, p. 133. 

t Philos. Trans., 1811, p. 277. $ Ibid., p. 275. 

$ " The space filled by a nebula of only 10' in diameter, at the distance 
of a star of the eighth magnitude, would exceed the vast dimensions of 
our sun at least 2,208,600,000,000,000,000 times." 

|| Philosophical Transactions, 1811, p. 277. 
L2 



126 THE AUTHENTICITY 

together, were void or vaporous. And it may be remarked 
that, as marking things of the same nature by the same 
name, a scripture connexion, or affinity may be traced be- 
tween the original matter from which the earth was formed, 
and elements described as subsisting still ; for in the enu- 
meration of the works of God that are above all things on 
the earth, are classed the stars and the heaven of heavens, 
and the waters* which are above the heavens, which are in- 
voked to praise the Lord, for he commanded and they were 
created.f The nebulous fluid is evidently " luminous" or 
" shining," for light alone renders it visible to us : and while 
the earth was without form and void, God said, Let there be 
light, and there was light. 

And God saiv the light that it ivas good : and God divided the 
light from the darkness, v. 4. 

While extensive diffused nebulosities are numerous, with- 
out form and void, in many of them some parts appear more 
luminous than others ; the nebulous matter, according to Sir 
W. Herschel, and as its appearances indicate, becomes con- 
densed, or less diffuse or void, and the light, as maybe seen, 
is divided from the darkness. The object, occupying an 
immensity of space, which is represented in plate 1, is de- 
scribed as an "extremely faint branching nebulosity; its 
whiteness is entirely of the milky kind, and it is brighter in 
three or four places than in the rest. "J In the "diffused 
nebulous matter," which forms the great nebula in Orion 
(p. 1, f. 2), " we may see, in one and the same object, both 
the brightest and faintest appearance of nebulosities that 
can be seen anywhere"^ in the northern hemisphere. It is 
visible to the naked eye. " The more that the power of the 
telescope is increased, the more diffuse and strange the ob- 
ject, and the illumination (light) is extremely unequal and 
irregular." It is compared by Sir John Herschel to " a cur- 
dling liquid," which is not an inapt description of water with- 
out form and void; or "to the breaking up of a mackarel 
sky, when the clouds of which it consists begin to assume a 
cirrous appearance, and is not very unlike the mottling of 
the sun's disk, the intervals being darker;" not inapt illustra- 
tions of the light divided or dividing from the darkness. It 
is a " chaotic" mass, " void, formless, and diffuse. "|| In large 
portions of nebulosities the light in some places is compar- 
atively extremely faint, while in other parts it shines with 

* Nebula, or nebulous matter, i. c, cloud or cloudy, may be said to be 
identified with waters, designated as without form and void. Water in a 
void or diffused state is vapour or cloud ; hereby denoting a harmony, even 
of expression, between the term which designates a state of matter, for 
which, as astronomers have affirmed, human language has no proper 
name. 

t Ps. cxlviii., 3-5. % Ph. Trans, for 1811, p. 273, 295. 

$ Ibid., 320, II Nichol, p. 123-126, 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 127 

increasing brightness, while in the intervening spaces it is 
scarcely, if at all, to be discerned. Where all was previously 
luminous, one part becomes brighter as another becomes 
dark, as may be inferred from the appearances which nebu- 
losities and nebulae in general present. The rudest form in 
which matter is to be seen is that of a diffused shining nebu- 
losity ; and the first varied appearance is that of the lumin- 
ous matter assuming a more condensed form, and occupying 
a space partly brighter and partly dark. And God divided the 
light from the darkness. 

And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. 
And the evening and the morning were the first day ; or, literally, 
and there ivas evening, and there was morning the first day (or 
one day), v. 4, 5. 

In judging of the scriptural record of creation, we cannot 
rightly apply any other measure to the days — literally, as the 
term is thus defined, days — of creation, than that which alone 
is given in the record itself. According to this express def- 
inition, the light was called day. However long or however 
short was the duration of the light, so long or so short was 
the day ; no other measure is given of its duration, which 
was determined as it w r as defined by that of the light alone. 
Till that ceased the evening did not come, nor was the day 
at an end. God called the light day, and the darkness he call- 
ed night. Then, as now, the duration of the light constituted 
the day. We are not told that the continuance of the light, 
so soon as it w r as called into existence, was dependant on 
any measure of time, or that the light disappeared again from 
the face of the deep, according to the measurement of the 
time by which a yet unformed globe would finally revolve 
round its axis : but the Scriptural definition expressly bears 
that the light itself was called day ; and neither the first day 
nor any other did end till the light gave place to darkness 
and the evening came. For not only was the light called 
day, and the darkness called night, but, as repeated in re- 
spect to each succession of them both, there was evening and 
there ivas morning the first day (or one day). Time, as known 
by any other measure, had, we may say, no existence then. 
The days of creation, as defined, owned no relation but to 
the succession of light and darkness, to which they owed 
their being and their name. And the duration of the light 
(whether long or short) determined, as it defined, that of the 
day.* The term, in the original, sometimes signifies " time 

* Neither adding to the word of God nor taking from it, we hare to re- 
gard solely that which is written. Doubts and difficulties have without, cause 
been started on this subject, by unconsciously adding to the word, or in- 
cluding a presumed measure of time in the definition of the days of crea- 
tion, instead of limiting it, as in the scripture record, to the light alone, by 
the uninterrupted continuance of which, totally irrespective and exclusive 



128 THE AUTHENTICITY 

generally," as noted by Gesenius ; and, like that which is 
translated waters, and is immediately derived from the same 
root, denotes, according to Parkhurst, tumult or tumultuous 
motion, to which these new discoveries give as high a signif- 

of any other period than that of its duration alone as succeeded by dark- 
ness, the day itself was designated and its length determined. On the so- 
lution of the question how long lasted the light, all knowledge of the length 
of the day is made absolutely dependant. According to this scriptural 
definition, the length of the day varies in every planet ; and within the polar 
circles of our own globe, light is succeeded by darkness only once in a year. 
Till the fourth day of creation, i. e., till the fourth returning period of con- 
tinuous light, the sun itself was not formed into a condensed and distinct 
luminary. We see, in fact, that light exists in the heavens independent of 
the sun ; and phosphorescent, igneous, and other bodies, or chymical com- 
binations, give multiplied proofs on earth of the same truth. And the 
duration of the primary cycles of the light and darkness was regulated by 
a measure unknown, because unrevealed to man. After the fourth day 
(the light being uniformly called day), till the work of creation was finished, 
and the present order of nature perfected, the successive periods of light or 
of the day are necessarily of unknown duration. The rotation of the earth 
on its axis in twenty -four hours now determines the length of the light and 
darkness, and, consequently, of the day. But can it be said that that was 
always the same as it is now ? Or, rather, does not the Nebular Hypothe- 
sis (in strictest accordance with the scriptural record of the formation of 
the earth, from xoaters without form, and void) seem to demonstrate that the 
rotation of each planet, like that of the sun, began with a slow and almost 
imperceptible motion, which gradually increased as the globe consolidated? 
And was there not thus a time when, in the progress of its " augmenting 
velocity," the rotation of the earth on its axis occupied the same period as its 
revolution'm its orbit ? Such, in fact, is the actual motion of the moon. And 
according to the Nebular Theory, and because of this once increasing ro- 
tary motion, by which the waters or nebulous fluid were separated from 
each central condensing mass, the moon bears the same relative origin to 
the earth that the planets bear to the sun. — (See Dr. Nichol's Architecture 
of the Heavens, p. 173.) " Such globes [after being divided from the cen- 
tral mass and gathered together into one place] would likewise invariably fol- 
low the law of rotation, or necessarily rotate on their axis in the direction of 
their revolutions ; and every one of the secondary masses might, during the 
phenomena of its subsequent condensation and augmenting velocity of ro- 
tation, throw off rings corresponding in all respects to the rings around the 
primary nucleus ; these condensing in their turn, and, according to the fore- 
going laws, into solid annuli and satellites, or moons." — (Ibid.) Is it not 
therefore supposable, or, rather, may it not be inferred, that there was a 
time when, in respect to its motions, the earth revolved round the sun as 
the moon now revolves round the earth, or that a similarity of origin may 
have been accompanied by similar relative motions ? And if the rotation 
of the earth on its axis ever occupied as much time as its revolution in its 
orbit, whatever the duration of that time, it is manifest that, in such a case, 
of which there is so direct and visible an analogy in the motions of the 
moon, which thus uniformly presents one side to the earth, day, as defined 
in scripture, would have signified a period without any apparent end. Who- 
ever can read the alphabet of astronomical science must perceive that un- 
interrupted light shone over one half of the earth, while the other was un- 
visited by a ray of the sun so long as this order was unaltered ; nor was a 
shade of evening seen, nor could the day come to a close, until the laws of 
nature, which are the Word of God, evolved the essential fundamental 
change. The light of the earth has shone only on one side of the moon for 
six thousand years ; and how long the sun may have shone uninterruptedly 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 129 

icancy as if all the elements of matter were to be scattered 
into chaos again. 

And God said, Let there be a firmament — literally, as in the 
margin of the Bible, expansion — in the midst, of the waters, and 
let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the fir- 
mament, and it ivas so. And God called the firmament or expan- 
sion heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second 
day. 

" The number of compound nebulae," says Sir W. Herschel, 
" being so considerable (a hundred and fifty being noticed in 
the three preceding articles), it will follow that, if they owe 
their origin to the breaking up of some former extensive neb- 
ulosities of the same nature with those which have been 
shown to exist at present, we might expect that the number 
of separate nebulae should far exceed the former, and, more- 
over, that these scattered nebulae should be found not only 
in great abundance, but also in proximity or continuity with 

on one side of the earth, before the heavens and the earth were finished, it 
is not for mortal man, who is but of yesterday, to determine. So long as 
there was continuous light, so long was the day. And each day — as now 
— was defined as determined by the light ; the seventh returning succession 
of which, when the heavens and the earth were finished and the present 
order established, connected the Sabbath of the Lord with the beginning 
of the creation, and was ever to be remembered and kept holy to the glory 
of the Creator, in whose word it is written by an apostle, as he looked 
from the beginning of the creation to the dissolution of the heavens and of 
the earth, Be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord 
as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 2 Peter iii., 8. And 
looking alone to the scripture definition of the successive days of creation, 
or measuring the day by the light, then we see that if the light continued 
for but an hour, that hour was the day ; or if it lasted uninterruptedly for 
a thousand years, or so long as each rotation of the earth round its axis 
corresponded with its revolution in its orbit, the same face, so to speak, be- 
ing always presented to the sun (as that of the moon is to the earth), con- 
cerning that period or any other, this, and this alone, was the word of God, 
he called the light day, and there was evening and there was morning each suc- 
ceeding day. The Hebrew word translated evening literally signifies mix- 
ture or mingling. D^D^H V2i between the evenings, or, more literally, be- 
tween the mixtures (Parkhurst). The origianl or primary meaning of the 
term evening thus implies greater changes in the previous order than that 
of the absence of light. Its significancy may be seen in the successive 
changes during the progress of creation, and in the different strata conjoined 
in the same " series" of formations, or in the transitions from one series to 
another. There was evening (literally mixture) and there was morning in 
the six days of creation. The term morning or the dawn (Gesenius), equiv- 
alent with to see or to behold, implies the return of the light, the darkness be- 
ing ended, or the mixture or transition being accomplished. The day was 
measured by the light, and not the light by the day ; and except skeptics 
define the duration of the light before the sun existed and also before the 
work of creation was finished, even as scripture defines the duration of 
the day by that of the light, they are free to talk of millions of years. But 
knowing in whom they have believed, Christians may retain their faith, 
that, at once, or even in a moment, the waters brought forth living creatures 
abundantly at the word of the Lord. 



130 THE AUTHENTICITY 

each other, according to the different extents and situations 
of the former diffusions of such nebulous matter. Now this 
is exactly what, by observation, we find to be stated of the 
heavens."* 

" Parting with these diffused and amorphous nebulosities," 
says Dr. Nichol, " structure, as governed by law, begins to ap- 
pear" (or another word of God was another law to nature). 
" Even its first visible indications are very emphatic. The 
winding nebulosity in Plate XY. (II.), for instance, exhibits 
a congregating or condensing of the filmy matter into two 
distinct places, which look like bright nuclei, surrounded by a 
corresponding dark ring, precisely as if it had been formed 
by an actual condensation of the diffused matter, under con- 
trol of the law of universal gravitation. This is no anoma- 
lous appearance, for in every case the seeming commence- 
ments of structure are of the same kind. This aggregating 
power, indeed, without the interference of any other, appears 
to lead to the entire breaking up of the amorphous masses."! 
The same instructive nebulosity shows how the light is di- 
vided fronrthe darkness, one part being extremely faint ; and 
the nebulous or luminous matter is condensed and compara- 
tively bright, or so concentrated from that of its original dif- 
fused and void or vaporous state, that it may be seen how 
nebulae, by a new law, begin to grow out of a nebulosity. 
One change, or the word that causes it, may be said to pre- 
pare the way for another, as observable in all the works of 
God ; and the dividing of the light from the darkness is suc- 
ceeded, as may be seen in the same figure, by the dividing of 
the waters from the waters ; and the shapeless mass begins to 
be broken up or subdivided. The dividing of the waters from 
the waters, or the division of one nebulosity into separate 
nebulas, may best be interpreted and understood by other 
figures in the same plate, which form the objects of the ob- 
servation of astronomers ; and which they have set forth to 
show the next step in the visible progress of the construction 
of the heavens, by comparing together many hundreds of 
nebulas. 

" The present state of the heavens presents us with sever- 
al extensive collections of scattered nebulas, plainly indica- 
ting by their very remarkable arrangement that they owe 
their origin to some former common stock of nebulous mat- 
ter."! 

" The expansion of the nebulousjuatter in general may be 
considered as consisting of three Tiimensions." "The class 
of nebulas which are chiefly extended in length, but, at the 
same time, have a considerable breadth, is very numerous. 

* Phil. Trans, for 1811, p. 280. 

f Nicholas Architecture of the Heavens, p. 133, 134. 

t Phil. Trans, for 1811, p. 291, 292. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 131 

This kind of expansion (firmament) admits of the utmost va- 
riety of lengthened form and position ; and from the great 
number of nebuloe to which I have referred." says Sir W. 
Hersche], " the existence of such nebulosities is fairly to be 
deduced."* " The appearance of an irregular round figure 
necessarily requires that the extent of two dimensions of the 
nebulous matter should be nearly equal in every direction at 
right angles to each other. Except an irregular cylinder or 
cone, placed in a particular required situation, no expansion 
of the nebulous matter but an irregular globular one can be 
the cause of the irregular round figure of these nebulae."! 

The term expansion (as the original Hebrew word, trans- 
lated firmament, literally means) of nebulous matter is of 
repeated occurrence in the writings of Sir W. Herschel, in 
describing different forms of nebulae, and it appropriately des- 
ignates the sphere of each. By the breaking up of former 
extensive nebulosities, the ivaters, or by whatever name the 
nebulous fluid be designated, ivere divided from the waters. 
Each separate nebula had its own firmament in the midst of 
them. And if, as Sir W. Herschel states, and as appearances 
indicate, " the separate and scattered nebulae owe their ori- 
gin to the breaking up of some former nebulosities," the neb- 
ulous fluid under the firmament, or within the expansion of 
each nebula, was thus divided from that above or beyond it, 
till the word had its perfect work. And it was so ; and over 
the mighty space, throughout which matter in " its rudest 
state," or without form and void, was previously diffused, the 
expanse of heaven was stretched out, and God called the fir- 
mament heaven ; and there was evening and there was morning 
the second day. 

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered 
together into one place, and let the dry (landj) appear : and it 
teas so. And God called the dry (land) earth ; and the gather- 
ing together of the ivaters called he seas ; and God saw that it 
was good. Gen. i., 9, 10. 

The diffuse nebulous matter, without form and void ; the 
dividing of the light from the darkness ; and, subsequently, the 
dividing of the waters (or the nebulous fluid) from the wa- 
ters ; and, next, the gathering together into one place of the 
diffused elements of matter, may be seen, as, in the wonder- 
ful progress of astronomical science, " the construction of 
the heavens," in all its grades, is brought before the " obser- 
vation" of man. The same law of gravitation, or word of 
God, manifests its power over all. The gradual condensa- 

* Phil. Transactions for 1811 , p. 294, 295. f ibid., p. 297. 

% Not in the original. The same fluid or waters once void became con- 
solidated ; and that which was once liquid became dry, and, formerly cov- 
ered or unseen, it appeared. 



132 THE AUTHENTICITY 

tion of the nebulous matter, " as shown in hundreds of in- 
stances, is rendered so evident," to use the words of Sir W. 
Herschel, " as not to admit of a doubt ;" and is thus gathered 
together into one place, " Instead of inquiring after the na- 
ture of the cause of the condensation of the nebulous matter, it 
would indeed be sufficient," in the words of Sir W. Herschel, 
"to call it merely a condensing principle; but since we are 
already acquainted with the centripetal force of attraction 
which gives a globular figure to planets, keeps them from fly- 
ing out of their orbits in tangents, and makes one star re- 
volve around another, why should we not look up to the 
universal gravitation of matter as the cause of every condensa- 
tion, accumulation, compression, and concentration [gathering 
together into one place] of the nebulous matter! Facts are 
not wanting to prove that such a power has been exerted; 
and as I shall point out a series of phenomena," he contin- 
ues, " in the heavens, where astronomers may read in legi- 
ble characters the manifest vestiges of such an exertion, I 
need not hesitate to proceed in a few additional remarks on 
the consequences that must arise from the admission of this 
attractive principle."* Plate III. 

Sir Isaac Newton was the first to discover, in modern times f 
the law of gravitation. But in one of the first verses of the 
Bible the origin of that law, as giving a being and a form to 
every globe, may here be read in the word of its Author, as 
that of the Legislator of the Universe. Let the waters be 
gathered together into one place, " The gravitation of matter" 
may be looked up to as the cause of every concentration, or 
gathering together into one place, of the nebulous matter. 
But, in respect specially to the origin of planets, of which 
our globe is one, the theory of La Place, incomparably the 
simplest, the most scientific and profound, which has ever 
been promulgated, and which is perfectly accordant with the 
views of Sir W. Herschel respecting the gradual condensa- 
tion of nebulae, strikingly illustrates how, throughout the 
whole circle or orbit in which the earth annually revolves, 
round the sun, the scattered elements of our globe, under the 
firmament or heaven, w T ere gathered, together into one place,, 
or concentrated into a single globe. 

Whenever the theories of philosophers are inferences from 
facts or deductions from the known laws of nature, they are 
justly entitled to strict examination and high regard, while 
the vain speculations of imaginative theorists are destitute 
of any claim to the slightest consideration. La Place was 
never excelled by any mortal in |he study and knowledge of 
the mechanism of the heavens. And he who calculated the 
utmost perturbation of the planets in their dibits, according 

* Phil. Trans, for I8U, p, 2S£ 



Tl.JH. 




n.w. 




OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 133 

to existing relations and laws, was the man above all others 
entitled to present to the world a theory of their origin, such 
as harmonized with his calculations, and was evolved from 
the profound knowledge of the motions and of the laws by 
which they are regulated. 

If any testimony be lacking to connect " the construction 
of the heavens," as deduced from the observations of astron- 
omers, with that of the successive formations which the earth 
presents to geologists, there cannot be a more unexception- 
able witness than the man who gave his great name to the 
argument of Hume ; and there cannot be a more competent 
witness than " the philosopher whose knowledge of celes- 
tial mechanism was complete, and whose capacity to trace 
elementary laws to their remotest consequences has never 
been surpassed !"* La Place's theory, founded on philosoph- 
ical principles, and lucidly illustrated by Professor Nichol, 
is, that, in the gradual condensation of the nebulous fluid, the 
substance of the planets was separated by the rotatory mo- 
tion of the mass (in the same manner as loose matter is 
thrown off from a revolving wheel) ; and its original motion 
being preserved, the separate parts were combined by their 
relative attraction, "the whole solidifying into one consid- 
erable globe. "f The theory which accords with and explains 
many astronomical facts, otherwise unresolvable, is not less 
accordant with the Mosaic record, and may be said to show 
at once how the nebulous fluid or waters were first divided, 
and afterward gathered together into one place, and also 
how the existence of light and the formation of the earth 
preceded that of the sun and of the moon. 

The largest telescopes, penetrating an inconceivable dis- 
tance into space, have power to bring within the vision of 
the human eye luminous objects three hundred and eighty 
times more distant than Sirius, the distance of which is so 
great that the diameter of the earth's orbit (one hundred and 
ninety millions of miles) is comparatively a point, and forms 
not a line wherewith to measure it. But in such a field of 
view, a dark globe like ours, that shines not by its own light, 
may comparatively be deemed a microscopic object, con- 
cerning which, in remote regions, it need not be wondered 
that the telescope has little or nothing to tell : and with all its 
powers it cannot show in any case the incipient changes or 
growing divisions of a distant globe, from which some anal- 
ogy might be traced as to the origin of our earth. The task 
belongs to geologists : and the earth itself is their field. So 
soon as the dry land appears, their testimony may begin; and 
though their work be incomplete, their labours have been 

*N ichors Architecture of the Heavens, p. 177, 
t Nichol, p 173. 

M 



134 THE AUTHENTICITY 

abundant, and some results are sure. They have discovered 
an order, or a succession of changes in the structure of the 
"earth, as distinct in some respects as that which astronomers 
have observed in the " construction of the heavens." And 
so far as geology is perfected as a science, a comparison 
may be also instituted between what was written of old and 
what has been newly discovered. The general accordance 
is obvious, and has been repeatedly referred to : but the term 
day, its scriptural definition, having been overlooked, has been 
a stumbling-block, as if it had been defined by hours and not 
by the light. 

It would tend to the " oppositions of science," falsely so 
called, rather than to the elucidation of indisputable truth, 
to institute a comparison between the scriptural account of 
the creation of the earth, and those alleged facts relative to 
its structure, concerning which geologists are not themselves 
agreed. The science is both new and avowedly imperfect. 
Of the distribution of organic remains in the earth, Profes- 
sor Phillips, in his able treatise, states, " that accurate results 
on the subject are yet collected from a very small part of 
the surface of the globe."* In respect to ascertainable facts, 
the science must be perfected before the comparison can be 
completed. But between the Mosaic record and the writings 
of some geologists, who exclude it from their view or keep 
it wholly apart from their investigations, the analogy might 
be traced far more closely than some systems of geology 
agree with each other. 

" In geology, the whole period included between the limits 
(of the different epochs) is, and, perhaps, must ever be, abso- 
lutely unknown; yet the succession of occurrences is, in 
general, clearly ascertained."! The periods measured by 
the succession of light and darkness in a yet unformed or 
unfinished world, and, except as thus alone defined, the whole 
period from the time that the earth ivas without form and void, 
till the heavens and the earth id ere finished, and all the host of 
them, must perhaps, in like manner, be ever absolutely un- 
known : but a succession of occurrences is detailed in the 
written word, as well as ascertained in fact. And geology, 
affords the means of a kindred comparison with that which 
astronomy first supplies. As in former instances, the con- 
nexion may, on high authority, be traced between the one 
" series of new discoveries" and the other. And the testi- 
mony of astronomers and geologists may be thus linked to- 
gether. 

" La Place and Herschel have presented, as the result of 
their profound reflections, the speculation of this globe origi- 

* Phillips's Geology , in new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britarmica, and 
separately published, p. 51. 
f Phillips's Geology, p. 291. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 135 

nating from the condensation of a gaseous expansion in 
space ; a notion often extended to the other planets, and 
supposed to be in harmony with the common direction of 
their motion round the sun, the nearly coincident planes of 
their orbits, and other less striking circumstances. That 
such gaseous or vaporous expansions exist in spaces is known 
both by observation of comets and of nebulae."* 

La Place, it is said, was asked by Bonaparte why he never 
extended his views from secondary causes to the first great 
cause. That, it was replied, does not come within the field 
of our observation. But beyond what man could see, in re- 
spect to the condensation of our globe, from a void or vapor- 
ous mass to a consolidated form, we read what philosophers 
have not always considered, 

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered 
together unto one place, and let the dry (land) appear: and it 
was so. 

The gathering together unto one place is the law of each 
globe, b}^ the condensation of the nebulous mass, and may 
be said to be visible in every degree of condensation. And 
the whole earth, as astronomers and geologists are agreed, 
was, as the most probable inference from existing phenome- 
na, once a liquid mass, and covered all over with waters, or 
in a fluid form. And as at first the earth was without form 
and void, and astronomical observations show that such is 
the rudest and first visible state of matter; so geological dis- 
coveries, previously adduced in refutation of the saying of 
scoffers, that all things have continued as they were from 
the beginning of the creation, here supply as clear a com- 
mentary on the first scriptural description of the earth, when 
the waters had been gathered together into one place, and 
the dry and consolidated crust of the earth began to appear. 
That the (so termed) primitive rocks, which formed the high- 
est mountain ranges, were elevated, by whatever cause, from 
below the level of the ocean into their present position, is 
held by geologists as an ascertained and undoubted truth. 

When the previous progress of creation had converted 
amorphous, or formless and void, or vapoury matter, into a 
consolidated globe, on which the dry land appeared, a new 
act of creation covered it with verdure, and, with a word, God 
clad with beauty the world he had made. 

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, and herb yield- 
ing seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose 
seed is in itself upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth 
brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and 
the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself after his kind : 
and God saw that it was good. And there was evening and 
there was morning the third day. Ver. 11, 12, 13. 

* Phillips's Geology, p. 257. 



136 THE AUTHENTICITY 

Man, though not then the witness, was from the beginning 
the object of the Creator's bounty. Grass, herbs, and trees 
are now nowhere so abundant on the earth, as are still the 
collected remains of those which lie entombed within it, 
after the lapse of thousands of years since they flourished 
on its surface, when the grass was untrodden and the fruit 
untasted by man or by beast. Now ripened into produce, 
rich as apples of gold and of silver, the universal benefit 
they yield is a universal proof of their primeval existence. 
The vegetable origin of coal may be held as now an in- 
disputed fact. " It is worthy of attention," says Phillips, 
" that, after the coal ivas deposited, reptile life began to be mani- 
fested, and, finally, to predominate ; while, on the other hand, 
vegetable life, though the land was much more extensive, 
and apparently much more lowered in temperature, never 
yielded again such thick and extensive carbonaceous deposites."'* 
" An abundance of distinctly preserved vegetable remains 
occur throughout the coal-fields of Great Britain. But the 
finest example I have ever witnessed," says Buckland, "is 
that of the coal-mines of Bohemia. The most elaborate 
imitations of living foliage upon the painted ceilings of Ital- 
ian palaces bear no comparison with the beauteous profu- 
sion of extinct vegetable forms with which the galleries of 
these instructive coal-mines are overhung. The roof is cov- 
ered as with a canopy of gorgeous tapestry, enriched with 
festoons of most graceful foliage, flung in wild irregular 
profusion over every portion of its surface. The effect 
is heightened by the contrast of the black coal colour of 
these vegetables with the light groundwork of the rock to 
which they are attached. The spectator feels himself trans- 
ported, as if by enchantment, into the forests of another 
W'Orld ; he beholds trees of form and characters now unknown 
upon the surface of the earth, presented to his senses al- 
most in the beauty and vigour of their primeval life ; their 
scaly stems and bending branches, with their delicate appa- 
ratus of foliage, are all spread forth before him ; little im- 
paired by the lapse of countless ages, and bearing faithful 
records of extinct systems of vegetation, which began and 
terminated in times of which these relics are the infallible 
historians. Such are the grand natural herbaria wherein 
these most ancient remains of the vegetable kingdom are 
preserved in a state of integrity little short of their living 
perfection, under conditions of our planet which exist no 
more."f 

In these great natural herbaria are treasured up for the use 
of man the grass, and herbs, and trees which then decked 
the earth, and still enrich it ; and yet remain to bear concur- 

* Phillips's Geology, p. ] 19. 

t Buckland's Bridgwater Treatise, vol. i., p. 458, 459, 






' -■ - ' SB _ _i. 1L , 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES, 137 

ring testimony to the record of the fact of their creation af- 
ter the dry {land) appeared, and God called the dry land earth. 

But other and distinct acts of creation succeeded before 
the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of 
them. And from the first foliage of a newborn world in its 
pristine beauty, we may lift up our eyes and see, from the 
analogy which other firmaments present, how nebulous mat- 
ter may be traced in all its forms, as exemplified by a vast 
variety of objects, till specks in our firmament, few of which 
are discernible to unassisted human vision, appear " clusters 
of stars" as bright and numerous as the stars around us that 
are seen by the naked eye. 

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heav- 
en, to divide the day from the night) and let them be for signs, 
and for seasons, and for days and years : And let them be for 
lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth : 
and it ivas so. And God made two great lights ; the greater light 
to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made 
the stars also. See Plate IV. 

An able and lucid illustration of this topic, in the successive 
order of creation, may, as the best exposition, be quoted at 
length from Dr. Shuttleworth's excellent treatise on " The 
Consistency of Revelation with Human Reason." 

" Every person conversant with the scriptural account of 
the creation must have been to a certain degree perplexed by 
the fact that Moses asserts light to have been called into ex- 
istence on the first day, and yet expressly declares that the 
sun and moon were not created as luminaries until the fourth. 
This statement, at first sight, has the air of singular and gla- 
ring inconsistency, which it would seem to be impossible to 
reconcile with truth. If we consider the writer of the Book 
of Genesis as an impostor or a fanatical theorist, attempting 
to impose his own wild speculations upon the world, we can- 
not possibly imagine a statement less likely to suggest it- 
self to the author himself, or less calculated to secure prose- 
lytes. And yet the observations of the late Sir W. Herschel 
afford us reason to believe, as is well known, that a process 
is at this moment going on in the system of the heavenly 
bodies precisely analogous with this statement of the Mosaic 
writings. That celebrated astronomer, in his papers address- 
ed to the Royal Society in 1811, on the subject of the celes- 
tial nebulae, has given the history of his own observations 
carefully followed up during the course of a long life. He 
has there shown that those irregularly-shaped and widely-dif- 
fused masses of light, wiiich, under the name of luminous 
nebulae, had long attracted the notice of scientific men, and 
which are known to exist in vast numbers in various parts 
of the heavens, are, by a regular process of gradual conden- 
sation, made to approach more and more to a spherical form, 

M2 



138 THE AUTHENTICITY 

until, having acquired a bright stellar nucleus, and losing their 
remaining nebulosity, they finally assume all the definite 
brightness of a regular fixed star. From the uniformity of 
this operation, so far as it has been remarked, and from the 
vast multitude of instances in which it has taken and is still 
taking place, it seems natural to infer that a large portion of 
those stars, whose places have been recognised in the heavens 
from time immemorial, derived their first origin from the 
same process. But it is also the generally received opinion, 
that the sun of our own planetary system is a star precisely 
of the same nature with the rest ; and, if so, it seems not im- 
probable, from analogy, that it derived its present form from 
the same cause of condensation, and that its original state of 
existence was that of a thin luminous fluid, occupying a vast 
portion of the orbits of those planetary bodies of which it is 
now the centre. It is surely not a little remarkable, that 
what might a century ago have been quoted as a seeming ab- 
surdity and oversight in Scripture, should be found thus sig- 
nally to accord with one of the most curious discoveries of 
modern astronomical science."* 

" A middle state," says Sir W. Herschel, " between the pro- 
gressive condensation of a globular nebula and a cluster of 
stars can have no existence ; because a globular nebulosity, 
when condensed, can only produce a single star ;"f and con- 
cerning the double stars, which form a numerous class, Sir 
W. Herschel states, that " it seems as if we had these double 
objects in three different successive conditions : first as neb- 
ulae ; next as stars with remaining nebulosity ; and, lastly, as 
stars completely free from nebulous appearance. "J He 
classes the heavenly bodies, with many subdivisions, into 
nebulosities, nebulae, stellar nebulae, planetary nebulae, stars, 
and clusters of stars. 

Between the result of his " observations" in seeking to as- 
certain the construction of the heavens and the Mosaic ac- 
count of the creation of the heavens, no indistinct analogy, 
we apprehend, may be traced from first to last, till from the 
most diffused nebulosity, without form and void, the sun, 
the moon, and the stars in our firmament shone bright in the 
heavens, and gave light unto the earth, and the void fluid from 
which they were formed was condensed in them all, and its 
original diffusedness subsisted no more. 1. The fluid nebu- 
lous matter was diffused, or ivithout form and void. 2. The 
waters were divided from the waters, or "the whole amorphous 
(shapeless) mass was broken up," and one vast nebulosity was 
converted into many jiebulce, and in the sphere of each an ex- 
pansion or firmament- was stretched out. 3. The waters were 
gathered together into one place, till each in its order became 

* P. 52, 53, 54. f Phil. Trans. 1814, p. 261. 

X Phil. Trans. 1814, p. 251. 



piy. 







OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES* 139 

a consolidated globe. And, 4, Other suns and systems being 
simultaneously formed, the word of God had effect, and from 
the once void and formless mass, which in the beginning con- 
stituted the substance of the unformed heavens and earth; 
the sun, the moon, and the stars (See Plate V.) were brought 
forth in their order ; and the heavens were garnished by the 
same Spirit of the Lord which moved at first upon the face 
of the deep. 

And God said, Let the ivaters* bring forth abundantly the 
moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the 
earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great 
whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters 
brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl 
after his kind : and God saw that it was good. And God blessed 
them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the ivaters in the 
seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the 
morning were the fifth day. Ver. 20, 23. 

God created great ichales. The prophet Ezekiel compares 
Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to the great dragon (thanim) that lieth 
in the midst of his rivers. And these and other living crea- 
tures that moved, which the waters brought forth abundantly, 
may thus be identified with crocodiles, sea-lizards, and the 
race of reptiles. 

"The species of fossil saurians" (lizards), to adopt the 
words of Buckland, " are so numerous, that we can select 
only a few of the most remarkable among them for the 
purpose of exemplifying the prevailing conditions of animal 
life at the periods when the dominant class of animated beings 
were reptiles ; attaining, in many cases, a magnitude unknown 
among the living orders of that class, and which seem to be 
peculiar to those middle ages of geographical chronology 
which were intermediate between the transition and tertiary 
formations. 

" During these ages of reptiles, neither the carnivorous nor 
lacustrine mammalia of the tertiary periods had begun to 
appear ; but the most formidable occupants, both of land and 
water, were crocodiles and lizards, of various forms, and often 
of gigantic stature, fitted to endure the turbulence and con- 
tinual convulsions of the unquiet surface of our infant world. 

"When we see that so large and important a range has 
been assigned to reptiles among the former population of 
our planet, we cannot but regard with feelings of new and 
unusual interest the comparatively diminutive existing or- 

* u Who can tell," says Dr. Nichol, speaking of the Nebula in Orion, 
" but this amorphous substance may bear within it, laid up in its dark bosom, 
the germes,the producing power of that life which in coming ages will bud, 
and blossom, and effloresce into manifold and growing forms," &c. The 
word of the Lord did give that producing power to waters once without form 
(amorphous) and void. And the ivaters brought forth abundantly. 



140 THE AUTHENTICITY 

ders of that ancient family of quadrupeds, with the very 
name of which we usually associate a sentiment of disgust. 
We shall view them with less contempt when we learn from 
the records of geological history that there was a time 
when reptiles not only constituted the chief tenants, and also 
the most poioerful possessors of the earth, but extended their 
dominion also over the waters of the seas. 

" Persons to whom this subject may now be presented for 
the first time will receive, with much surprise, perhaps al- 
most with incredulity, such statements as are here advanced. 
It must be admitted, that they at first seem much more like the 
dream of fiction and romance than the sober results of calm 
and deliberate investigation ; but to those who will examine 
the evidence of facts upon which our conclusions rest, there 
can remain no more reasonable doubt of the former exist- 
ence of these strange and curious creatures, in the times and 
places we assign to them, than is felt by the antiquary who, 
finding the catacombs of Egypt stored with the mummies of 
men, and apes, and crocodiles, concludes them to be the re- 
mains of mammalia and reptiles that have formed part of 
an ancient population on the banks of the Nile. , ' 

Immediately continuous to this account of fossil saurians, 
Buckland selects in the first instance, and describes the ich- 
thyosaurus, or, as the word signifies, fish-lizard. " If," as he 
remarks, " we examine these creatures with a view to their 
capabilities of locomotion [the living creatures that moveth 
which the waters brought forth, or marine saurians], and the 
means of offence and defence, which their extraordinary 
structure afforded to them, we shall find combinations of 
form and mechanical contrivances which are now dispersed 
through various classes and orders of existing animals, but 
are no longer united in the same genus. Thus, in the same 
individual, the snout of a tortoise is combined with the teeth 
of a crocodile, the head of a lizard with the vertebrae of a 
fish, and the sternum of an ornithorhynchus with the paddles 
of a whale. Some of the largest of these reptiles must have 
exceeded thirty feet in length."* 

The plesiosaurus (nearly a lizard) is " nearly allied in 
structure to the ichthyosaurus, and coextensive with it 
through the middle ages of our terrestrial history. To the 
head of a lizard it united the teeth of a crocodile, a neck of 
enormous length, resembling the body of a serpent, a trunk 
and tail having the proportions of an ordinary quadruped, 
the ribs of a chameleon, and the paddles of a ivhale. Such are 
the strange combinations of form and structure in the plesio- 
saurus, a genus the remains of which, after interment for 

* Auckland, ibid., p. 169, 



OP THE OLD TEST'AMENT SCRIPTURES. 141 




Prom Sir Charles Bell's Bridgwater Treatise on the Hand. {Conybeare.) 

thousands of years amid the wreck of millions of extinct 
inhabitants of the ancient earth, are at length recalled to 
light by the researches of the geologist, and submitted to our 
examination in nearly as perfect a state as the bones of the 
species that are now existing upon the earth. The plesio- 
sauri appear to have lived in shallow seas and estuaries. We 
are already acquainted with five or six species, some of which 
attained a prodigious size and length" &c* 

The megalosaurus, or great lizard, which ranks in the same 
order and era, was an enormous reptile measuring from forty 
to fifty feet in length, and, according to Cuvier and Buckland, 
" partaking of the structure of the crocodile and the monitor."! 
"It probaMy fed on smaller reptiles, such as crocodiles and 
tortoises, whose remains abound in the same strata with its 
bones. "J Identified as the same word of the original He- 
brew is with the dragon or crocodile of the Nile, a clearer 
commentary cannot be sought to show how closely, in char- 
acterizing the animals and specifying the relative era of their 
formation, the scriptural record bears upon the fact. 

" The peculiar feature in the population of the whole se- 
ries of secondary strata was the prevalence of numerous 
and gigantic forms of saurian reptiles. Many of these were 
exclusively marine ; others amphibious ; others were terres- 
trial, ranging in savannas and jungles, clothed with a tropi- 
cal vegetation, or basking on the margins of estuaries, lakes, 
and rivers. Even the air was tenanted by flying lizards.^ under 
the dragon form of pterodactyles. The earth was probably 
at that time too much covered with water, and those por- 
tions of land which had emerged above the surface were 

* Buckland, vol. it., p. 202, 203. f Ibid , p. 234. % Ibid., p. 237. 

<J> "We are already acquainted with eight species of these flying sau- 
rians, varying from the size of a snipe to that of a cormorant." — See Buck- 
land's description of them, vol. ii., p. 221-223. Besides these, the remains 
or footsteps of other birds have been discovered in strata of the secondary 
series.—Ibid., p. 86. 



142 THE AUTHENTICITY 

too frequently agitated by earthquakes, inundations, and at- 
mospheric irregularities, to be extensively occupied by any 
higher order of quadrupeds than reptiles. "* 

And God created great whales, amphibious animals, fish- 
lizards, or great lizards, or crocodiles, and everything that 
moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their 
kind, and every winged fowl after his kind : and God saw that it 
was good. 

The reader may not have failed to mark the testimony of 
geologists, given in their own words, that " after the coal 
was deposited" [after the third day (as measured by the 
light), in which the trees which formed them grew], " reptile 
life began to be manifested, and finally to preponderate" [on 
the fifth day]. "The middle ages of geological chronology 
that were intermediate between the transition or tertiary for- 
mations [even as the fifth period of light was intermediate 
between the third and the sixth] are denominated ' the ages 
of reptiles.' And, again, during the ages of reptiles, neither 
the carnivorous nor lacustrine mammalia of the tertiary 
period had begun to appear." 

But it is farther written, in reference to a distinct and suc- 
cessive (or the tertiary) period, And God said, Let the earth 
bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creep- 
ing thing, and the beast of the earth after his kind : and it was so* 
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and every- 
thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind : and God saw 
that it was good. • 

" The tertiary series introduces a system of new phe- 
nomena, presenting formations in which the remains of ani- 
mal and vegetable life approach gradually nearer to species 
of our own epoch."! "It appears that the animal kingdom 
was thus early established on the same general principles 
that now prevail ; not only did the four present classes of 
vertebrata exist ; and among mammalia (animals which 
suckle their young), the orders pachydermata (thick skin- 
ned), carnivora, rodentia (animals that gnaw), and marsupi- 
alia (having pouches for their young) ; but many of the gen- 
era, also, into which living families are distributed [after 
their genera or kind], were associated together in the same 
system of adaptations and relations which they hold to each 
other in the actual creation. "J 

" The recent origin of man is not controverted by any ge- 
ologist." Nor, it may be said, is there a doubt that man was 
the last of created beings on the earth. That fact, which 
physical science has only newly disclosed, ever had its rec- 

* Buckland, vol. i., p. 76. 

t Buekland's Bridgwater Treatise, vol. i., p. 74, 75. 

% Ibid., vol. i., p. 87. 



OP THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 143 

ord, like the rest, in the first chapter of the Bible. For, as a 
distinct, and separate, and last act of creation, diverse from 
all that preceded it, we read : 

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our like- 
ness ; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and 
over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the 
earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the 
earth. So God created man in his own image ; in the image of 
God created he him, &c. Ver. 26, 27. 

It maybe remarked that the fish of the sea, here enumer- 
ated as the first in order, are specifically mentioned by 
name for the first time after their creation. And the only 
geological doubt or difficulty (perhaps only yet unresolved) 
respecting the order of successive creations, compared with 
the scriptural record, arises from the fact that some marine 
fossils of the earliest origin are to be found in the strata in 
which the vegetable world was entombed. But it is worthy 
of notice, that " not a single species of fossil fishes has yet 
been found that is common to any two great geological for- 
mations, or living in our present seas ;" and that the forma- 
tions of magnesian limestone, shell limestone, and variegated 
marl, in which the seas were filled with marine animals, are 
conjoined, in the secondary series, with the lias and oolite 
formations which mark the era of amphibious animals or 
reptiles, were undoubtedly subsequent to the carboniferous or 
coaly strata, in which vegetables were as closely imbedded. 
A new and great creation, characteristic of the period, and in- 
cluding the tenants of the land as of the deep, might well 
have been recorded, though some species of fishes which 
had tenanted the seas, but were then extinct, found not a 
place in the record of creation. The question is not whether 
that record might not have been more full and complete if 
its purpose had been to teach geology to man, but whether, 
as scoffingly termed, "the iew touches" which have been 
given do not show that Moses moved the pencil by a higher 
knowledge than his own. And appealing to the most recent 
discoveries, both in astronomical and geological science, we 
may ask whether there be not a visible resemblance in the 
great lineaments of each, as presented and literally painted 
to our hand, with the Mosaic portraiture of the creation of 
the heavens and of the earth. 

The scriptures speak of the waters which are above the 
heavens* as subsisting still ; and Christians, in their sacred 
psalmody, call on them to praise the Lord, who commanded 
and they were created. The first chapter of the Bible nar- 
rates how, from waters without form and void, the heavens 
and the earth were formed, till all were finished. And need 

* Ps, cxrviii., 4, 



144 THE AUTHENTICITY 

we now to ask if there be not some analogy between what 
scripture told from the beginning and what science has at 
last discovered ? 

Astronomers have written on " the Construction of the 
Heavens," "the Mechanism of the Heavens," "the Archi- 
tecture of the Heavens,"* while geologists have described 
the successive formations in the crust of the earth. Moses 
records the creation of the heavens and of the earth. Their 
conjoint subjects are the same as his. 

i Astronomers have designated the first and rudest form in 
which matter is visible, as nebulosities and nebula:, i. e., cloudi- 
ness and cloud, and have termed their component substance 
the nebulous (or cloudy) fluid. And how else could waters 
without form and void, or vapoury and uncondensed, be more 
appropriately designated 1 The nebulosities are without 
form and diffuse, or void. And so also were the heavens and 
the earth, after their light rendered them visible. As exhib- 
ited by the great brightness in some parts, and extreme 
faintness in others, of the same nebulosity, the light may be 
seen divided from the darkness. And there was evening and 
there ivas morning the first day. 

Astronomers next speak of different forms of nebulous 
expansion. And in the same nebulosity may be seen the 
division into separate parts of the luminous fluid, or the 
breaking up of the whole amorphous or shapeless mass. 
And there ivas an expansion, or firmament, in the midst of the 
heavens, and the ivaters were divided from the waters. And 
there ivas evening and there ivas morning the second day. 

The gradual condensation of the nebulae, as seen in every 
form, gives evidence of the recognised and universal law of 
gravitation ; the centripetal (centre-seeking) force, as Sir 
Isaac Newton termed it. And the great modern master of 
the higher geometry, who has trod farthest in the path in 
which Newton first led, and who was so versant with the 
motions of the planets as to trace them by a profound saga- 
city to an origin befitting the majestic and divine simplicity 
of the laws which regulate them, has shown how, as affect- 
ing our globe and every other, the waters were gathered to- 
gether into one place, and the earth was consolidated. 

And as the dry land appeared, the task of geologists be- 
gins. To the oldest of formations they have given the title 
(not undisputed) of primitive rock ; and with the magic wand 
of truth they have brought back again, after the lapse of 
thousands of years, the springtime of our earth, and showed 

* The reader is specially referred to the very interesting and able work 
of Dr. Nichol, Professor of Practical Astronomy, Glasgow University, in 
which the subject is elucidated both in a philosophical and popular 
manner. 



li.YBL . 




Brogmart 



iY.IX. 




r/.x. 



SKETCH 

of the 
FOSSIL STEM OF A TREE. 

ImuidtiL tlwJepth of48fi0wms: 
.ABOVE THE COAL 




?aUe of ' [nrfi.w 



OP TllE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 145 

how it was clothed with the luxuriance and decked with the 
beauty of paradise itself. They more than restore the grass, 
and the herb, and the fruit-tree, which the fancy of man never 
thought of, and the eye of man never looked on as they 
grew. And there was evening and there was morning the third, 
day. 

Geologists having shown us the beauty of the earth, while 
yet unblighted because of sin, astronomers invite us to look 
up again to the heavens and see how the nebulous fluid, 
gradually condensed to a far narrower space than the orbit 
of the earth, is consolidated into a sun, and, only slightly 
tinctured with nebulosity, shines a light in the firmament of 
heaven ; while, in like manner, La Place illustrates how the 
formation of the moon also was necessarily posterior to that 
of the earth. And, together with our sun, the other stars of 
our firmament were, by the operation of the same word of 
God or law of nature, simultaneously formed. And there was 
evening and there was morning the fourth day. 

Geologists again take up the task and tell of a time — the 
fifth day, defined like the rest by the succession of light and 
darkness, but else of undefined duration, and succeeding that 
of the origin of vegetables, and preceding that of terrestrial 
animals, whether wild or domestic — when the waters were 
filled with living creatures, and the air tenanted with birds : 
and they bring forth from the depositories which the God of 
nature has formed, those amphibious animals, or race of ma- 
rine saurians, which they also designate by the name which 
the original scriptures assign them in their precise charac- 
ter, magnitude, multiplicity, and place. And there was even- 
ing and there was morning the fifth day. 

And, lastly, the tertiary or latest formations (except those 
of diluvial or more recent volcanic deposites), succeeding the 
age of reptiles, and preceding that of man, set forth finally to 
view the beasts of the earth, and the cattle, and every creep- 
ing thing after their genera or kinds, till the whole work of 
animal creation was finished. And by a separate and last 
act of creative power, magnified as such, the topstone, once 
pointing to heaven, was formed and put over the whole 
earthly fabric ; and the work of creation here below was 
crowned by that of man, when, though formed of the dust, 
the Lord breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man 
became a living soul. And God saw everything that he had 
'made, and, behold, it ivas very good. And there was evening and 
there was morning the sixth day. 

The following diagram from Phillips's Geology (p. 44) will 
convey an idea of the relative position and order of succes- 
sion of unstratified rock gg, of the- primary strata e d, of the 
secondary c b, and of the tertiary a (t trap). 

N 



146 



THE AUTHENTICITY" 




Comparing these independent accounts, respectively writ- 
ten at the interval of three thousand years, and guarantied 
by observations of the heavens and demonstrations in the 
earth, may we not conjoin the last verse of the first chap- 
ter of Genesis with the first verse of the second, and em- 
phatically say, Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, 
and all the host of them * And whose word is this but that of 
their Creator? 

The stars of our firmament are indeed a host, of which a 
small part only is seen by the unaided human eye. Astron- 
omers, so far as they can, have shown its form, so as best to 
accord with and explain the appearance of the heavens, as 
faintly represented in Plate VI. f But He who from the be- 
ginning told man of their creation, can alone name them by 
their names, as he created them by his word, and brings them 
forth in their order. And from a diffused nebulosity, waters 
without form and void, spread throughout an inconceivable 
immensity of space, to a numberless cluster of stars, as we 
read the word of God and look on the operation of his hands, 
the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament 



* Without any special regard to the scriptural definition of the term day, 
Christian writers since the days of A than asms have repeatedly interpreted 
the days of creation as periods of undefined duration. The modern hy- 
pothesis is supported by great names, " which supposes the word 'begin- 
ning,' as applied by Moses in the first verse of the Book of Genesis, to ex- 
press an undefined period of time which was antecedent to the last great 
change that affected the surface of the earth." But the record itself does 
not seem to be limited to this last great change, nor even to the creation of 
the earth alone, exclusive of the heavens. The earth is described as with- 
out form and void, which is apparently, if not obviously, fatal to the idea of 
anterior formations. On the second day the firmament was made, which 
God called heaven. On the fourth day (and not before the first) God made 
the sun, the moon, and the stars, and set them in the firmament of heaven. 
And after the record of the work of the sixth and all the preceding days, it 
is said, Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 
And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, &c. And 
it is added, These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when 
they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the 
heavens. So manifestly does the creation of the heavens and of the earth, 
frtin waters without form and void, to the hosts of heaven in their order, 
sesm to be included, according to express declaration, in the Mosaic Rec- 
ord. 

f Brewster's Encyclopaedia, art. Astronomy, pi. 41. 




JAld 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 147 

showeth his handiwork. But the law, also, of the Lord is 
perfect, converting the soul ; the testimony of the Lord is 
sure, making wise the simple. 

The heavens are our witnesses ; earth is full of our depos- 
itaries; truth must spring up where the Creator hath sown 
it ; and philosophers at last must be its tributaries. The 
Christian may well rejoice in the progress of science, and 
gladly give it a free and unfettered course. Knowledge shall 
be the stability of the times of the Messiah ; and the mind of 
man, enlightened in the knowledge of the word and works 
of God, shall be freed from the nebulosity which enshrouds 
it, and tbe light shall be divided from the darkness. And 
then shall the greatness of his works be seen, and the truth 
of his word be made manifest. 

But although, compared to that full flood of light, only the 
first flush of dawn may seem to be arising now over all the 
subject before us, whence, we ask, came this light, were it 
far fainter than it is 1 Is it not enough to scare away the 
children of darkness from the field which they have assumed 
as their own ? What invention of man ever bore a simili- 
tude to truths ever previously unknown and only newly dis- 
covered, like that very record which skeptics have assailed I 
And how are all imaginative cosmogonies of former ages 
swallowed up by that of Moses, as were the rods of the 
Egyptian magicians by that of Aaron? Can our great cal- 
culators tell what is the sum of the improbabilities that such 
an analogy, if not founded on fact, would have subsisted or 
could be traced from first to last between the observations of 
Sir W. Herschel, the opinions of La Place, the accumulated 
and classified discoveries of geologists, and the short and 
simple record of Moses 1 Before Herschel handled a tele- 
scope, or La Place had studied the laws of planetary motion, 
or Cuvier had touched a fossil bone, what Vulcanist, orNep- 
tunist (combating whether the crust of the earth was of aque- 
ous or igneous origin), or other uninspired mortal, could have 
described the order of succession, in the creation of the heav- 
ens and of the earth, and marked in six successive periods 
the rank of each, in so close conformity with the recent dis- 
coveries both of astronomy and geology, when the name of 
science can be attached to these words, like the man who, 
three thousand years ago, could humanly know nothing of 
either from the mud of the Nile or from the sands of the 
desert ? What man on earth, from the beginning of the cre- 
ation, ever recorded its history with such conformity to ex- 
isting observations and discoveries, as did He of whom the 
scripture saith, God made known his ways unto Moses ? And 
has not this word its visible illustration in the first page of the 
Pentateuch, as well as in every prophecy which he uttered T 

And may we not finally ask whether the testimony, borne 



148 THE AUTHENTICITY 

by the fate of the Jews and by the desolation of Judea, that 
Moses was a prophet of the Highest, be not repeated by the 
record of the creation, and also, most slightly as we have 
glanced at either, by the whole Mosaic history and dispen- 
sation ] In contending for the faith on any ground to which 
our adversaries bring us, it is not enough that our cause pass 
scatheless. When Nebuchadnezzar cast the faithful ser- 
vants of the Lord into the seven-times heated fiery furnace 
because they would not worship a golden image, and when 
they came out uninjured by the fire that slew those who 
touched them, the king's word was indeed changed ; and he 
blessed the God of Israel, and issued a decree that none 
should speak anything against their God, " because there is 
no other God that could deliver after this sort." And when 
the scriptures come forth uninjured from the fire which slays 
those who touched them, may not the words of those be 
changed who speak against the Bible 1 may it not be receiv- 
ed where before it was ridiculed, and be studied where for- 
merly it was slighted % And may not every golden idol be 
abandoned for the worship and service of the Creator of 
Heaven and of earth, as whose word the Bible is approved ; 
not only because it has passed unhurt through the firey or- 
deal to which the idolaters of blinded reason subjected it, 
but because it is thus manifest that no uninspired man could 
have written after this sort, as Moses wrote ; and that no 
other God but the Lord by whom he spake created the 
heavens and the earth, as it hath thus been told from the be- 
ginning ? 

On the whole, even from the limited and imperfect view 
contained in the preceding pages, it may be seen that the 
seal of God is demonstrably affixed to the Old Testament. 
Every country, and city, and spot on which the word of the 
Lord lighted, bears its vivid impression by a realized judg- 
ment : and while these speak in a language universally in- 
telligible, the Jews are living witnesses of " the divine lega- 
tion of Moses" in every country under heaven : and the 
Bible is thus " the Book of the Lord," in which those things 
are written that God alone could have revealed. Universal 
tradition supplies its concurring testimony to some of the 
earliest historical events recorded by Moses ; and others are 
corroborated by new discoveries, and even by pictorial rep- 
resentations. Cities by their names bore the inscription of 
scriptural facts, which is yet as legible as ever in their ruins. 
And to name the patriarchs and. primogenitors of the He- 
brew race is virtually to repeat facts, thus consigned from 
the beginning to everlasting remembrance. Positive insti- 
tutions were ordained for memorials in all generations ; and 
from their prophetic as well as commemorative nature, they 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 149 

set a mark upon the Jews to show what they were and what 
they shall be ; and constitute them the witnesses of wonders 
wrought in Israel of old, and " the prisoners of hope," who 
look to Zion yet. Though, as Moses foretold, they now 
grope at noonday as the blind gropeth in darkness, of old 
they were set apart in another manner from the nations; 
and the Mosaic dispensation, ere a better covenant appeared, 
stood alone for many ages before the law was made void by 
traditions, as the sole witness and the sole word of the one 
living and true God, and was singularly and gloriously dis- 
tinguished from all the debasements and abominations of 
idolatrous paganism. And, finally, exclusive of manifold 
strong confirmations besides, whether Moses in the first 
words of the Bible recorded the creation of the heavens and 
the earth, as their construction and formation are at last sci- 
entifically deduced from existing phenomena, or Malachi, in 
closing the vision and prophecy, foretold that the land of Ju- 
dea would be smitten with a curse which is yet unrepealed, 
the Old Testament Scriptures, from first to last, are not left 
without a witness that they are the Word of God. 

If the eyes of men be closed against visible facts, and if 
the truth and inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures be 
denied, farther inquiry would be alike unavailing, and all 
reason would be lost on the inveterate enemies of faith. 
Could demonstration of a revealed word be stronger than 
that the Lord hath done the very things which he said ? and 
may it not in all truth and soberness be affirmed, that if men 
do not believe Moses and the prophets, neither would they he 
persuaded though one arose from the dead. The latter would 
tell of judgments to come, but the former tell also of judg- 
ments that are seen. God has accredited the fact that he 
spake by them, as none but the Omniscient could have spo- 
ken. He has shown the interposition of his power accord- 
ing to their word : and he has thus manifested and magnified 
that word as his own. And appealing to the understanding 
and senses of men, his controversy with gainsayers is 
whether they will believe or not ; whether they will close 
their ears against the truth and their eyes against the light ; 
whether any evidence will convince them ; or whether, when 
the wrongs of reason shall be avenged, they shall see at last 
that'they themselves had good cause to " lay their hands upon 
their hearts," and say that these are hardened in unbelief 
and steeled against conviction, till the experience of judg- 
ment — not others', but their own — be finally the resistless 
reason of a hopeless faith. 

But " if the heart be capable of comprehending the lan- 
guage of argumentation ;" and if truths that present them- 
selves to the sight be seen, and belief in the inspired word 
of God be thus substantiated in every mind opened to con- 

N2 



150 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

viction by the Spirit of Truth, then our task may happily 
approach to its close before it be seemingly begun, as the 
demonstration of the truth of the Christian religion follows 
hard on the demonstration of the inspiration of the prophets. 
In passing from the existing proofs of the inspiration of 
the prophets, and of the authenticity of the Old Testament, 
to the consideration of the credibility of the New, the way 
of the Lord is prepared, and the highway of our God is made 
straight by testimony not human, but Divine. Jesus himself 
said unto the unbelieving Jews, " Do not think that I ac- 
cuse you to the Father ; there is one that accuseth you, even 
Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye 
would have believed me ; for he wrote of me." "Moses," 
says Paul, " verily was faithful in all his house as a servant, 
for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken 
after." He who revealed the fate of the Jews to this day, 
and wrote the history of the world from the beginning of the 
creation, accuseth those before God who believe not in 
Jesus. The Author of the Christian religion and his apos- 
tles appeal to the scriptures as testifying of him. And as 
mercy rejoiceth over judgment, so the predicted judgments 
that have fallen on guilty nations are the ratified credentials 
of those prophets who, as witnesses of God, bear testimony 
of Messiah the Saviour, as they testified beforehand the suf- 
ferings of Christ and the glory that should follow . 



CHAPTER IV. 

TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS TO THE COMING OF A MESSIAH; 
AND CONSEQUENT EXPECTATION OF HIS COMING AT THE COM- 
MENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 

That the Old Testament Scriptures, authenticated as pro- 
phetically an inspired record and as historically true, contain 
promises and prophecies concerning a coming Saviour which 
gradually develop the anticipated history of the Messiah and 
of his kingdom, a selection of such prophecies, to be after- 
ward more fully adduced, may serve as an ample demonstra- 
tion. 

And I will put enmity between thee (the serpent) and the 
woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise 
fciiv head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.* And I will make of 
tjiec (Abraham) a great nation, and I will bless thee, and 

* Genesis iii., 15, 



TO A MESSIAH. 151 

make thy name great ; and thou shalt be a blessing : and in 
thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.* And in thy 
seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.f And in 
thy seed (Isaac's) shall all the nations of the earth be bless- 
ed. J And the Lord said, I am the Lord God of Abraham 
thy father, and the God of Isaac ; the land whereon thou liest, 
to thee will I give it, and to thy seed : and thy (Jacob's) seed 
shall be as the dust of the earth ; and thou shalt spread 
abroad to the west and to the east, and to the north and to 
the south ; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families 
of the earth be blessed. § The sceptre shall not depart from 
Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh 
come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.|| 
I shall see him, but not now ; I shall behold him, but not nigh ; 
there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise 
out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and de- 
stroy all the children of Seth.^f I will raise them up a prophet 
from among their brethren like unto thee (Moses), and will 
put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all 
that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that 
whosoever will not hearken unto my words, which he shall 
speak in my name, I will require it of him.** And thine (Da- 
vid's) house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever 
before thee : thy throne shall be established for ever. ft I 
have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto 
David my servant, thy seed will I establish for ever, and build 
up thy throne to all generations. Then thou spakest in vis- 
ion to thy Holy One, and saidst, I have laid help upon one 
that is mighty ; I have exalted one chosen out of the people. 
I have found David my servant ; with my holy oil I have 
anointed him ; I will set his hand also in the sea, and his right 
hand in the rivers; also I will make him my firstborn, higher 
than the kings of the earth. My covenant will I not break, 
nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once have 
I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. His 
seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before 
me. It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a 
faithful witness in heaven. %% Why do the heathen rage, and 
the people imagine a vain thing 1 The kings of the earth 
set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against 
the Lord, and against his Anointed, saying, Let us break 
their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us : Yet 
have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will de- 
clare the decree : the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my 
Son ; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall 

* Genesis xii., 2, 3. f lb. xxii., 18. % lb. xxvi., 4. 

$ lb. xxvni., 13, 14. || lb. xlix., 10. ^" Num. xxiv., 17. 

** Deut. xviii., 18, 19. ft 2 Sam. vii., 16 

%$ Psl.xxxix., 3, 4, 19, 20, 25, 27,34-27. 



152 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost 
parts of the earth for thy possession, &c* My heart is in- 
diting a good matter; I speak of the things which I have 
made touching the king. Thou art fairer than the children 
of men; grace is poured into thy lips; therefore God hath 
blessed thee for ever. Thy throne, God, is for ever and 
ever; the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre. Thou 
lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness ; therefore God, 
thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above 
thy fellows. I will make thy name to be remembered in all 
generations.! He shall judge thy people with righteousness, 
and thy poor with judgment. He shall have dominion also 
from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. 
They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him ; and 
his enemies shall lick the dust. He shall spare the poor and 
the needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. His name 
shall endure for ever. The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou 
at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. 
The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest 
for ever after the order of Melchisedek.J For unto us a 
child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government 
shall be upon his shoulders; and his name shall be called 
Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting 
Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his gov- 
ernment and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of 
David and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it 
with judgment and with justice; from henceforth even for 
ever. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this.§ 
And there shall come forth a root out of the stem of Jesse, 
and a Branch shall grow out of his roots : And the Spirit of 
the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and un- 
derstanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of 
knowledge and of the fear of the Lord ; and shall make him 
of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord ; and he shall 
not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after 
the hearing of his ears ; but with righteousness shall he judge 
the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth ; 
and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and 
with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And 
righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness 
the girdle of his reins. And in that day there shall be a root 
of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people ; to 
it shall the Gentiles seek; and his rest shall be glorious. || 
Behold my servant whom I uphold ; mine elect in whom my 
soul delighteth ; 1 have put my spirit upon him ; he shall bring 
forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift 

* Ps. ii., 1-3, 6-8. f Ibid, xlv., 1, 2, 6, &c. t Ibid, lxxii. and ex. 
§ Isa. ix., 6, 7. |j Ibid, xi., 1-5, 10. 



TO A MESSIAH. 153 

up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets. A bruised 
reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not 
quench. He shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He 
shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment 
in the earth ; and the isles shall wait for his law, &c. I, 
the Lord, have called thee in righteousness, and will hold 
thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant 
of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind 
eyes; to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them 
that sit in darkness out of the prison-houses.* Is it a light 
thing that thou shouldst be my servant, to raise up the tribes 
of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel ; I will also 
give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayst be my 
salvation unto the ends of the earth. Thus saith the Lord, 
the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man 
despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of 
rulers, kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship, 
because of the Lord that is faithful, and the Holy One of Is- 
rael, and he shall choose thee.f The Lord shall give me the 
tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a 
word to him that is weary; he wakeneth morning by morn- 
ing ; he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned. The Lord 
God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither 
turned away back. I gave my back to the smiters, and my 
cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face 
from shame and spitting. For the Lord will help me ; there- 
fore shall I not be confounded ; therefore have I set my face 
like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.J Be- 
hold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted 
and extolled, and be very high. As many were astonished 
at thee (his visage was so marred more than any man, and 
his form more than the sons of men), so shall he sprinkle 
many nations ; the kings shall shut their mouths at him ; for 
that which had not been told them shall they see ; and that 
which they had not heard shall they consider. § Who hath 
believed our report \ and to whom is the arm of the Lord 
revealed 1 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, 
and as a root out of a dry ground ; he hath no form nor 
comeliness ; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty 
that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of 
men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we 
hid, as it were, our faces from him ; he was despised, and we 
esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs and 
carried our sorrows; yet w T e did esteem him stricken, smit- 
ten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our trans- 
gressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement 
of our peace was upon him ; and with his stripes we are heal- 

* Isa. xlii., 1-7. f Ibid, xlix., 6, 7. % Ibid. 1., 5-7. 

$ Ibid, lii., 13-15. 



154 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

ed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray ; we have turned 
every one to his own way ; and the Lord hath laid on him 
the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflict- 
ed ; yet he opened not his mouth ; he is brought as a lamb 
to the slaughter; and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, 
so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and 
from judgment ; and who shall declare his generation 1 for 
he was cut off out of the land of the living ; for the trans- 
gression of my people was he stricken. And he made his 
grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death ; be- 
cause he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his 
mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him ; he hath put 
him to grief; when thou shalt make his soul an offering for 
sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the 
pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see 
of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied ; by his knowl- 
edge shall my righteous servant justify many ; for he shall 
bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion 
with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong ; 
because he hath poured out his soul unto death ; and he was 
numbered with the transgressors ; and he bare the sin of 
many, and made intercession for the transgressors.* The 
Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath 
anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek ; he hath 
sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to 
the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are 
bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the 
day of vengeance of our God ; to comfort all that mourn ; 
to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them 
beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment 
of praise for the spirit of heaviness ; that they might be called 
trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might 
be glorified. f Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I 
will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a king shall 
reign and prosper, and execute judgment and justice in the 
earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell 
in safety; and this is the name whereby he shall be called, 
The Lord our Righteousness. J Turn again, O virgin of Is- 
rael, turn again to these thy cities. How long wilt thou go 
about, G thou backsliding daughter] for the Lord hath created 
a new thing on the earth, a woman shall compass a man.§ 
Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call 
his name Immanuel.|| Behold the days come, saith the Lord, 
that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, 
and with the house of Judah ; not according to the covenant 
which I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them 
by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt (which 

* Isa. liii. f Ibid, lxi., 1,3. $ Jer. xxiii., 5, 6. 

$ Jer. xxxi., 22. || Isa. vii., 14. 



TO A MESSIAH. 155 

my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto 
them, saith the Lord). But this shall be my covenant with 
the house of Israel ; after those days, saith the Lord, 1 will 
put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts ; 
and be their God, and they shall be my people.* And this is 
the name wherewith he shall be called, the Lord (Jehovah) 
our righteousness.! And I will set up one Shepherd over 
them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David ; he shall 
feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. And I the Lord 
will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them : 
I the Lord have spoken it.f I will sanctify my great name, 
which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have pro- 
faned in the midst of them ; and the heathen shall know that 
I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sancti- 
fied in you before their eyes. I will also save you from all 
your uncleannesses.^ And in the days of these kings shall 
the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be 
destroyed. || And the kingdom and dominion, and greatness 
of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the 
people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an 
everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey 
him.^f Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, 
and upon thy holy city, to finish transgression, and to make 
an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to 
bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision 
and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. Know, therefore, 
and understand, that from the going forth of the command- 
ment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto the Messiah 
the Prince, shall be seven w r eeks, and threescore and two 
weeks ; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in 
troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall 
Messiah be cut onvbut not for himself; and the people of the 
Prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanc- 
tuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the 
end of the war desolations are determined. And he shall con- 
firm the covenant with many for one week ; and in the midst of 
the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, 
and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it des- 
olate, even unto the consummation, and that determined shall 
be poured upon the desolate.** And they shall pollute the 
sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, 
and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate. 
And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he cor- 
rupt by flatteries ; but the people that do know their God 
shall be strong and do exploits. And they that do under- 
stand among "the people shall instruct many ; yet they shall 

* Jer. xxxi., 31-33. + Ibid, xxxiii., 10. % Ezek. xxxiv., 23, 24, 

$ Ezek. xxxvi., 23, 29. || Dan. ii., 44. IF Ibid, vii., 27. 

** Dan. ix., 24-27. 



156 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, 
many days.* For the children of Israel shall abide many 
days without a king, and without a prince, and without a 
sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and 
without teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel 
return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, 
and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days.f 
And thou, Bethlehem-Ephrata, though thou be little among 
the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth 
unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth 
have been of old, from everlasting. { And I will shake all 
nations, and the desire of all nations shall come ; and I will 
fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of Hosts. § Thus 
speaketh the Lord of Hosts, saying, behold the man whose 
name is the Branch ; and he shall grow up out of his place, 
and he shall build the temple of the Lord; even he shall 
build the temple of the Lord ; and he shall bear the glory, 
and shall sit and rule upon his throne ; and he shall be a 
priest upon his throne ; and the counsel of peace shall be 
between them both.|| Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion ; 
shout, O daughter of Jerusalem ; behold, thy king cometh 
unto thee ; he is just, and having salvation ; lowly, and riding 
upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.^f And I 
took my stafT, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might 
break my covenant which I had made with all the people. 
And it was broken in that day ; and so the poor of the flock 
that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the Lord. 
And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price ; 
and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty 
pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto 
the potter; a goodly price that I was prized at of them. 
And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them unto 
the potter in the house of the Lord.** And I will pour upon 
the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, 
the spirit of grace and of supplications ; and they shall look 
upon me whom they have pierced ; and they shall mourn for 
him as one that mourneth for his only Son, and shall be in 
bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for his first- 
born, ff Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, and against 
the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts ; smite 
the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered ; and I will 
turn my hand upon the little ones.Jf Behold, I will send my 
messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me ; and 
the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, 
even the messenger of the covenant whom ye delight in ; 
behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who 

* Daniel xi., 31, 33. f Hos. iii., 45. | Mic. v., 2. 

§ Hag. ii., 7. || Zech. vi., 12 r 13. f Ibid, ix., 9. 

** Zech. xi., 10-13. ft Ibid, xii,, 10. %t Ibid, xiii., 7. 



TO A MESSIAH. 157 

may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when 
he appeareth ] for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's 
soap; and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and 
he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and 
silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in right- 
eousness.* Behold, I will send unto you Elijah the prophet, 
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; 
and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, 
and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and 
smite the earth (land) with a curse. f 

The Scriptures of the Old Testament thus explicitly testify 
of the Messiah. And hence the expectation of his coming 
has been the common faith of the Jews in every country 
and in every age. A minute comparison will subsequently 
be instituted between those things which were foretold con- 
cerning the Messiah, and the history of Jesus and the doc- 
trine of the gospel. The fact is clear that a Messiah w 7 as 
foretold ; and so unquestionably w 7 as this the faith of the Is- 
raelites before the coming of Christ, that in " the Chaldee 
paraphrase now extant, which was translated and read in the 
synagogues long prior to the Christian era, there is express 
mention of the Messias in above seventy places, besides that 
of Daniel."J 

It was not the exclusive purpose of the oracles of God to 
show that his soul would be avenged on guilty nations. Nor 
was the seed of Jacob chosen as a peculiar people, to be 
called by his name, that the Gentiles should have rule over 
them, that the Israelites should be canned captive into Assyria, 
and the Jew T s be scattered among all nations. Jerusalem was 
not chosen by him for a city that he should place his name 
there, in order that it might be trodden down of the Gentiles. 
Nor did God give ordinances and statutes for his worship, 
and institute a priesthood to offer sacrifice, and love the 
gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Judah, in order 
that finally not one stone of the temple should be left upon 
another, and that the abomination of desolation should stand at 
last in the holy place where the God of Israel was adored. 
The history of the creation was not revealed to Moses, nor 
did the Lord bring his people by a strong hand and by a 
mighty arm out of the land of Egypt, and lead them through 
the Red Sea and through the desert, giving them bread from 
heaven to eat and w r ater from the smitten rock to drink, and 
place them in the land promised to their fathers, and set his 
statutes and his judgments among them, that the end of all 
might be that the Romans should come and take away their 
place and nation. Nor yet was the law given in thunder and 
lightning from Sinai, that it might eventually be superseded 

* Mai. hi., 1-3. f Ibid, iv., 5, 6. \ Pearson on the Creed, art. 2. 

O 



158 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

by the edicts of Caesar, or of the prince of the people that 
should take away the sceptre from Judah. These things, in 
verification of his word, showed that there was a God in Is- 
rael ; but they were not the end of the work of the Lord. 
Kings of the earth were raised up to be the executioners of 
the Divine judgments ; but the prophets, by predicting these, 
were installed into their office over the ruins of cities that 
strove against the Lord, in order to bear witness of the Mes- 
siah that was to come. The Jewish dispensation, as a frame- 
work, did not fall till a sure foundation was laid in Zion. 
The sceptre was not to depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from 
between his feet, till Shiloh should come. The second temple 
was not to be laid in ruins till the desire of all nations should 
come into it. The genealogies of the families of Judah were 
not to be lost till a branch should spring forth from the root 
of Jesse, and a son be raised unto David, whom he called 
Lord. Bethlehem was not to be given up to the Gentiles till 
out of it he should come forth who was to be ruler in Israel* 
The covenant with Israel was not to be broken till a new 
and everlasting covenant was revealed. The city and the 
sanctuary ivere not to be destroyed, nor sacrifice and oblation to 
cease, nor desolations determined, until the consummation, until 
the Messiah should be cut off, and the covenant confirmed 
with many ; and also till the time determined upon the Jews 
and upon Jerusalem had come, to finish transgression, and to 
make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, 
and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the 
vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. 

The promise of a Messiah is conjoined with the first de- 
nunciation against sin, and with the last threatening of judg- 
ment, recorded at the commencement and close of the Old 
Testament. It is the great and glorious theme of all the 
prophets. His coming is the creed of the Jews in every 
age and in every country. The assurance of it is ingrained 
throughout the whole Mosaic dispensation, which, without 
it, would have been a mass of unmeaning ceremonies and 
an intolerable yoke of bondage ; a religion more limited even 
in its purposed range than any other: and the voice of 
prophecy would have been nothing but an anticipated tale of 
desolation ; and, contrary to the whole analogy of nature, a 
work in which the hand of God is manifest would yet have 
been left imperfect, if abrogated statutes that merely in them- 
selves were not good had not been succeeded by an everlasting 
righteousness ; if sacrifice -'was to cease, and yet no atonement 
had been made for sin ; if the vision and prophecy had been 
sealed, and yet no Messiah had come : and the worship of 
the God of Israel, whose word by the prophets shows that he 
is Lord, would, together with the precious salvation, have 
ceased for ever, if they had been limited at once to the seed 



TO A MESSIAH. 159 

of Jacob and to the land of Judea. To abjure the belief of 
a Messiah would, on the part of any Jew, be to renounce 
the faith and the hope of Israel; and to deny it would, on 
the part of any Gentile, be to deny the proved inspiration of 
the prophets. 

Irrespective of the testimony given in the New Testament 
as to the fulness of the time of the Redeemer's advent, other 
evidence plainly shows that the opinion was prevalent over 
the whole East that the predicted time of his appearing had 
come at the beginning of the Christian era. Tacitus, in 
describing the fearful signs which preceded the destruction 
of Jerusalem, relates that " many were persuaded that it 
was contained in the old writings of the priests, that at that 
very time the East should prevail, and the Jews should have 
dominion," 1. v., c. 13. And Suetonius, in the life of Ves- 
pasian, c. i., n. 4, says, " That it was an ancient and con- 
stant opinion throughout the whole East, that at that time 
those who came from Judea should obtain the dominion." 
And certain it is, as an historical fact, that, from the days of 
Abraham to the present hour, there never was any other pe- 
riod in the whole history of the Hebrew race, during which, 
in indication of the credited fulness of the predicted time, 
so many false Christ's appeared and deceived many, as at 
the very season when Christianity arose and Judaism fell; 
and immediately subsequent to which, believers in Jesus 
spread his gospel, and the Jews were scattered throughout 
the world, in similar and simultaneous verification of the 
word of the Lord by the prophets. And from whatever 
source it originated, the prediction or opinion that nature was 
about to bring forth a king to the Romans,* may here, at 
least, demand an appropriate allusion, seeing that it so 
wrought on the fears of the Romans that the senate decreed 
that no child born that year should be brought up, but be ex- 
posed. This remarkable decree — which was rendered inop- 
erative in a manner which farther exemplifies the credit at- 
tached to the oracle, through the influence of those senators 
whose wives cherished the hope of giving birth to the great 
king — was passed in the very year in which Pompey took 
Jerusalem ; and no sooner had the holy city yielded to the 
imperial, than the conquest was thus associated with the fear 
which agitated Rome, that Nature, or, to adopt a more just 
and intelligible phraseology, the God of Nature, was about 
to give a king to the Romans, though a child that had not then 
been born. Nor, in rigid scrutiny of concurring evidence as 
to the belief of the peculiar or precise time when the Messiah 
was to come, or a greater than any other king to appear, 
should the fact be overlooked, of which tens of thousands of 

* Suetonius, lib. ii., sect. 93. Quoted by Leslie. 



160 OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS 

witnesses are to be found throughout all the classical schools 
of Europe, that the first of the Latin poets, touching for once 
on a nobler theme than his wont, paulo majora canamus, 
proclaimed the approaching birth of a great deliverer of the 
human race a few years before the birth of Christ ; and, as 
if copying Isaiah rather than Homer, portrayed the blessings 
of his Divine kingdom in strains unmatched by heathen poesy ; 
as if Jesus had had a messenger to prepare his way in the 
capital of the world, as well as in the wilderness of Judea. 

While such striking coincidences, peculiar to the time, and 
unprecedented or unparalleled in history, may, on reflection, 
astound the reader, if prejudiced against the Messiahship of 
Jesus, the direct testimony of Josephus among the Jews, and 
of Tacitus and Suetonius among the Gentiles, confirms the 
fact of the general expectation of the coming of the promised 
Messiah about the very period of the commencement of the 
Christian era. 



CHAPTER V. 



OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The inspiration of the prophets of Israel being visibly and 
incontestibly demonstrated by existing facts ; the credibility 
of genuine miracles being established, and the great argu- 
ment against the adequacy of any testimony in their con- 
firmation being transferred into a direct evidence of inspira- 
tion ; the antiquity of the Old Testament Scriptures being 
undeniable, on the slightest investigation, their authenticity 
being illustrated even by modern discoveries, and confirmed 
by irrefragable proof, and their testimony of a coming Mes- 
siah being explicit and abundant, we may enter on the kin- 
dred question of the credibility of the New Testament in the 
full knowledge that faith in the Messiah is not left to stand 
alone on the testimony of man. 

The birth, the life, the miracles, the death, and resurrec- 
tion of Jesus — who professed to be the Messiah spoken of 
by the prophets, whose coming the Divine Mosaic dispensa- 
tion predicted and prefigured — derive not the full measure of 
credibility which pertains to them from all that men have re- 
corded or could have recorded concerning these marvellous 
events. Human testimony may singly accredit mere human 
things, for which no other guarantee can be given than the 
word or the writing of man, and the certainty of which, as 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 161 

affecting only temporary and perishing interests, needs not 
to be tried by any other test than the corresponding narra- 
tives of fallible historians. But as such a charge never oth- 
erwise devolved on human testimony as that which was 
committed to the witnesses of Jesus, the tidings which they 
bear lay claim to a warrant as high above that of all others 
as their importance excels theirs, and as sure and sufficient 
for the confirmation of things that in their nature and order 
are Divine, to all who will hear the word of God or see the 
evidence which he gives, as any testimony of man could be 
in accrediting things that are natural. The spirit of proph- 
ecy, saith the Scripture, is the testimony of Jesus. And the 
testimony of man is not, unaided and alone, to be put in its 
place, or to be made chargeable with the full execution of 
that which it is the avowed object and office of the prophetic 
testimony to fulfil. 

Reverting, then, for a moment, to the professed connexion 
between the inspiration of the prophets and the credibility of 
the gospel, a connexion so close and inseparable that the 
doctrine of the gospel is, that Jesus is the Messiah of whom 
the prophets testified; and also to the connexion between 
the Old Testament and the New, similarly close, in that the 
one is professedly the completion of the other, it may, merely 
for the present, be in the remembrance of the reader that, 
prophecy being true and the Bible- being genuine, there is 
thus a power of evidence prepared for bearing on the truths 
of the gospel such as no testimony of man could ever have 
imparted. 

It hath seemed meet unto Him with whom wisdom dwel- 
leth — and the truth of whose word, confirmed in all past ex- 
perience by the very changes of human things, shall stand, 
though the foundations of the earth be shaken — to make the 
history of the world the witness of his word, and to show, 
from those events themselves which have come to pass upon 
the earth, and which have not only been recorded by histo- 
rians, but which any man, without the testimony of another, 
may now see with his own eyes, that the words of the 
prophets were truly the oracles of God. And it becomes us, 
therefore, in investigating the credibility of the gospel, not 
to rest alone on the testimony of man while Jesus appealed 
to a higher, or to strain a part beyond its natural powers or 
limits to execute singly the office of the whole, or to trench 
on the peculiar province of the testimony of God, as if he, 
by his prophets, had never once testified of the Messiah or 
borne witness of his Son. It is not even alleged in the New 
Testament that the faith of primitive Christians, who were 
the witnesses of miracles, and who were converted by apos- 
tles, rested on their testimony alone. And the Jews of Berea 
were declared to be more noble than those of Thessalonica, 

02 



162 OP THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS 

hi that they received the word with all readiness of mind, 
and searched the Scriptures daily whether those things were so. 

Seeing, too, that miracles are not contrary to experience, 
but that there is evidence of a miracle, the greatest, perhaps, 
recorded in Scripture, all inquiry into the historical testimo- 
ny of the origin of Christianity is not precluded from the very 
nature of the facts with which it is associated ; but, on the 
other hand, conjoining the positive evidence of inspiration 
with the credibility of miracles, the testimony of any wit- 
nesses professedly recording the history of the Messiah 
would be found to be inapplicable and untenable, on being 
compared with the sure word of prophecy, if it testified only 
of human knowledge and natural events. But the fulness of 
evidence, as well as the rights of truth, forbid that the slight- 
est undue or unforced concession should be asked of the 
skeptic, or that any portion of the testimony of Jesus should 
be stretched in the least beyond its just measures and fair 
proportions in relation to the whole. And although the ar- 
gument against the belief of miracles is not only demonstra- 
bly fallacious, founded on a fiction, but actually confirmatory 
of the truth which it was designed to overthrow, still we ask 
not, and we need not ask, that the credibility of the Chris- 
tian religion should rest on any human testimony alone, how- 
ever perfect it might be. We would only claim that the 
historical evidence of the origin and progress of Christianity 
be fully, and fairly, and rigidly investigated. Or the invet- 
erate skeptic may, if he will, as more congenial to his feel- 
ings, enter on the inquiry on the supposition of the falsehood 
of the Christian faith, in order to ascertain, more carefully 
and minutely than he has hitherto done, the time and the 
manner in which, as he conceives, in contradiction to an apos- 
tle, the cunningly devised fable was palmed upon the world. 
And without conjuring up an ideal phantom, but looking to 
the nature of the testimony as well as to the nature of the 
facts, let him show, if he can, wherein the deficiency of that 
testimony lies. 

It is, then, to the historical testimony itself, as such, that 
we have primarily and principally, in the first instance, to 
look, in investigating, as a matter of fact, the actual rise of 
Christianity in the world : for as to the nature of the events 
recorded in the gospel, and of the doctrine which it unfolds, 
other proofs may clearly and fully be found to concur and 
to give a direct sanction to our belief. The New Testament 
is in every man's hand, or is known and read together with 
the Old, at least tenfold more extensively than any other 
book ; and it would be a marvel without a parallel on earth 
if no man really knew from whence it had come, or by 
whom or at what time it had been written. The Christian 
religion exists and is professed, though in various forms, a§ 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 163 

the only true faith, wherever civilization prevails ; while 
every other system of religion bears striking symptoms of 
decay and early dissolution, and cannot withstand the light 
that is pervading the world ; and while Mohammedanism, so 
long its rival in the number of its votaries, can now no more 
be compared to it than the pale sinking crescent, the thin 
extended rim of the setting moon, to the sun in the heavens, 
dispelling darkness wherever its light is unobstructed, and 
ever brightening as the clouds which obscured it pass away ; 
Christianity bids fair, in mere human prospect, to be the 
only religion in the world. But looking merely to what it 
is, and to the extensive recognition of its Divine authority, 
it would be strange indeed if its origin were unknown and 
undiscoverable, and if no positive, certain, and indisputable 
evidence of the actual time and manner of its rise and propa- 
gation could, by any possibility, be attained by the zealous 
researches of its friends or the prying scrutiny of its ene- 
mies- 

But in approacnmg the testimony which all history, civil 
as well as ecclesiastical, bears to the origin and rise of Chris- 
tianity, we do not enter a labyrinth of fable, where we might 
ever grope in vain without once grasping the truth : for 
never was the way of investigation more completely cleared, 
nor were ever facts more palpable to the sight of all men. 
This thing was neither done, nor is it hid, in a corner. And 
were it not that the varied and abundant evidences of the 
truth of the gospel disclaim any assumption destitute of the 
fullest and most direct demonstration, we might at once, 
from the clearness and prominence of both, take a conjoint 
view of prophecy and of history in respect to the present 
extent, the past corruptions, the early propagation of Chris- 
tianity, as all history concurs in describing them; and hence 
alone show that it has not been left without the witness of 
God and the corresponding testimony of man. And detach- 
ed from all antecedent credibility that pertains to it, it may 
not only be averred, without the hazard of denial on the part 
of any reasonable being, that there is only one history of 
Christianity, whether given by friends or foes, and that every 
adversary may be challenged to produce any other which, in 
any truth or reason, could ever bear a hearing ; but also that 
the most searching, or even the slightest investigation, must 
convince every candid inquirer that never on earth was a 
similar or so strong an attestation borne to any facts in the 
history of man as that which was given by the witnesses of 
Jesus. That testimony has to be tried whether it be com- 
plete of itself, and be infallibly substantiated as such, so far, 
in the first place, as human testimony can be. It may be 
put to the rack, as these witnesses were, that it may bear 
every tral; and the more searching the scrutiny, it will be 



164 OP THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS 

the better approved as, of itself, genuine and unimpeacha- 
ble ; and it may stand singly at the bar of reason, claiming 
a verdict for itself, as lacking no evidence that the testimony 
of Jesus has been borne to the world, and that nothing is 
wanting to the credibility of the gospel which it has been 
charged to impart. 

The sophistry of Jesuitical extraction, which their vaunt- 
ed argument displays, could gild a falsehood with a most 
deceptious plausibility, but could not disguise the inherent 
suspicion it betrays, that the testimony itself was not to be 
touched ; and, after its fallacy is seen, it is a tacit confes- 
sion of the power of that very testimony, with which, being 
unable to grapple, the wily speculatists shrunk from the en- 
counter. Evasion, which was their only wisdom, should 
have been their only boast. Unbelievers, in their fancied 
security and success, have not always proved aright the 
quality of their boasting, nor of their " great argument" of 
everlasting use. Retreat, though successful, is scarcely re- 
puted as the choicest theme for glory or the first claim for 
triumph. But slight is the hope of safety when, instead of 
having escaped for ever from indomitable foes, the fugitives 
must stand before an unbroken army with banners. And 
never, in the contest for historical truth, was there ranged 
on the field of controversy such an impenetrable mass as 
" the noble army of martyrs," flanked on each side by cap- 
tive enemies, the full force of whose testimony the evasive 
foes of Christian truth, when all ambush fails them, and 
when the phantom in which they trusted has vanished, have 
yet to encounter. 

The testimony of a heathen, vouched by a skeptic, may 
take the lead in this portion of the Christian evidence ; and 
all reasoning would be lost on those who would discredit it. 
Tacitus, an eminent historian, thus describes the origin of 
the name and faith of Christians, and the persecutions which 
they suffered in Home, the capital of the world, at so early a 
date as thirty years after the death of Christ. At that pe- 
riod " they were commonly known," as he relates, " by the 
name of Christians. The author of that name was Christ, 
who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a crimi- 
nal, under the procurator Pontius Pilate. But this pestilent 
superstition, checked for a while, broke out afresh, and spread 
not only over Judea, where the evil originated, but also in 
Rome, where all that is evil on the earth finds its way and 
is practised. At first those only were apprehended who 
confessed themselves of that sect ; afterward a vast multi- 
tude discovered by them ; all of whom were condemned, not 
so much for the crime of burning the city as for their en- 
mity to mankind. Their executions were so contrived as to 
expose them to derision and contempt. Some were covered 



OP CHRISTIANITY. 165 

over with the skins of wild beasts, that they might be torn to 
pieces by dogs ; some were crucified ; while others, having 
been daubed over with combustible materials, were set up 
for lights in the nighttime, and thus burned to death. For 
these spectacles Nero gave his own gardens, and, at the 
same time, exhibited there the diversions of the circus ; 
sometimes standing in the crowd as a spectator, in the habit 
of a charioteer, and at other times driving a chariot himself : 
until at length these men, though really criminal and deserv- 
ing exemplary punishment, began to be commiserated, as 
people who were destroyed, not out of regard to the public 
welfare, but only to gratify the cruelty of one man." (Taci- 
tus, b. xv., c. 44.) 

" The most skeptical criticism," says Gibbon, " is obliged 
to respect the truth of this important fact, and the integrity 
of this celebrated passage of Tacitus. The former is con- 
firmed by the diligent and accurate Suetonius, who mentions 
the punishment which Nero inflicted upon the Christians. 
The latter may be proved by the consent of the most ancient 
manuscripts ; by the inimitable character of Tacitus ; by his 
reputation, which guarded his text from the interpolations of 
pious fraud; and by the purport of his narration. "* 

Thus, on testimony which, for incontrovertible reasons, 
the most skeptical criticism is obliged to respect, it is distinctly 
related that Christians were commonly known by that name 
in Rome, when those who had been born at the time of the 
death of Christ had scarcely reached the years of manhood ; 
that they had their origin and their name from Christ ; that 
he had been put to death as a criminal ; and that that event 
had taken place in the reign of Tiberius and the procurator- 
ship of Pontius Pilate. And thus, on the authority of a stig- 
matizer of the faith, some of the leading articles of the 
Christian's creed meet a direct and immediate confirmation, 
that Christ " suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, 
and died." 

Both the place of the origin of the Christian faith, and its 
early and rapid propagation, are, on the high authority of the 
same historian, whose partialities and prejudices were all 
against it, alike obvious as its date. Though checked for a 
time, as the death of its " author" might well have seemed 
to give the deathblow to his cause, the religion of one who 
had been executed as a malefactor having become the doc- 
trine of the cross, it broke out anew, not only in Judea, but 
extended unto Rome ; and there numbered a vast multitude 
of adherents, who, in suffering for the name which they bore 
from their master, were faithful unto the death. 

So unnatural may the trials and tribulations through which 

* Gibbon's Hist., vol. ii., p. 407, 408. 



166 OP THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS 

Christians had to pass seem to many whose feelings are hu- 
manized by the influence of the gospel, and to whom the 
thought of the brutal exhibitions that formed the pastime of 
the ancient Romans is revolting, that some lurking doubt 
may cleave to their minds, if prone to suspicion while peru- 
sing the records of Christian martyrology, that the narrative 
may be overcharged, and that the cruelties which were ac- 
tually inflicted might possibly have received some slight ex- 
aggeration from the partiality, perhaps unconscious, of their 
sympathizing eulogists. But what is the first description, in 
profane history, associated with the name of Christians ? In 
the gardens of the emperor of Rome, open to the citizens, 
public spectacles were exhibited of varieties of tortures, 
rivalling each other in refined barbarity, inflicted on a vast 
multitude, all condemned to death. Intermixed with frivo- 
lous diversions and scenes of mirth, and exposed to derision 
and contempt in the very act and agony of their executions, 
are to be seen men clad with the skins of beasts, and, as 
such, devoured by dogs ; others, to vary the worse than sav- 
age sport, are nailed to crosses and expiring slowly, while 
their yet surviving brethren in name and fate, to lengthen 
out the horrid scene beyond the limits of the day, were, by 
the insatiable cruelty of Nero, covered over with inflamma- 
ble materials to illuminate the darkness while they were 
burning to death. Juvenal, the contemporary of Tacitus 
and Suetonius, in pointing his satire against the cruelty of 
Nero, could only, by a more minute description, complete 
the picture, which profane history presents, of the cruelties 
which that savage emperor exercised against the Christians, 
till those who detested began to commiserate them. The 
worst punishment he could threaten was that of those " who 
stand burning in their own flame and smoke, their head be- 
ing held up by a stake fixed to their chin, till they make a 
long stream (of blood and running sulphur) on the ground."* 
The rapid diffusion of Christianity, the violent persecu- 
tions to which its professors were subjected from the very 
name which they bore, and the vindication of their charac- 
ter from the imputation of evil practices, in a moral sense, 
are set forth in terms as clear and decisive as could be 
wished, in a public and authoritative document of undoubted 
accuracy, forming as invaluable a historical treasure as the 
testimony of Tacitus, which will be found at large in the 
Appendix. The frequent quotation of such documents, 
which are familiar to thousands, only shows the greater in- 
excusableness of unbelief in purely historical truths, and ex- 
poses the effrontery of those who, with a vain show of sci- 
ence, set their face against facts which none could deny but 

* Lardner, vol. vi, p. 638. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 167 

from the most gross ignorance or the most wilful misrepre- 
sentation. And any such attempt can only prove how low, 
in our day, skepticism has sunk, and to what an extremity of 
weakness, in argument, it is reduced. 

Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, a Roman province situ- 
ated at nearly the extremity of Asia Minor farthest from 
Judea, having suspended the execution of the Christians, in 
the seeming fear of thereby dispeopling his government, 
sought the resolution of his difficulties and doubts from the 
Emperor Trajan. And thus are we indebted for a most ex- 
plicit statement of the case, after due and rigorous examine 
tion, in the most confidential and unexceptionable form whic^ 
could well be conceived. While nothing could have beer* 
more notorious in Rome than a public spectacle in the royal 
gardens thrown open for the purpose, nothing more authori- 
tative could come from a province than the appeal and me- 
morial of the governor ; and nothing could have been more 
undisguised than the expression of his private sentiments to 
the eminent Trajan, in seeking the guidance of his authority 
and judgment as his emperor and his friend ; while no 
case could have demanded a more free and unreserved ex- 
position of the circumstances and facts than the act of sub- 
mitting them for his resolution and decision. And that no 
part of the testimony may be wanting, the answer of the 
emperor is also on record. 

From Pliny's epistle it is now as clear to us as it was then 
to Trajan (A. D. 112), that, ignorant of the practice otherwise 
adopted in the examination and punishment of Christians, a 
Roman governor, the elegant Pliny, doubted whether all, 
both old and young, should be indiscriminately punished, and 
whether they held fast their faith or abjured it; whether the 
very name alone, without any other crime, was a warrant 
for execution : that, after a third interrogatory and confes- 
sion, sentence of death was immediately executed, such in- 
flexible obstinacy silencing every doubt : that Christians, 
having the privilege of Roman citizens, were sent to Rome 
to be judged: and that many had been tried who were ac- 
cused on a mere anonymous libel — a libel of the name of 
Christian — some of whom invoked the heathen gods, wor- 
shipped the image of the emperor, offered up oblations to it 
in the manner of the heathen, and blasphemed Christ ; and 
the falsehood of the accusation against them being thus 
proved, as none of these things, it was said, any true Chris- 
tian could ever be compelled to do, they were held free from 
the punishment due to the name, while others, charged in 
like manner with the crime, had renounced the faith they 
once had professed. Yet the epistle farther bears, that, even 
on the testimony of these confessed apostates, the only prac- 
tice termed evil with which they were justly chargeable was 



168 OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS 

to meet together before daybreak on a stated day, and al- 
ternately to sing a hymn to Christ as to a God, and to bind 
themselves by an oath (literally sacrament) that they would 
not do anything that was evil, nor be guilty of theft, pilfery, 
or adultery, nor break their promise, nor refuse to restore 
whatever was committed to their hands. We farther learn, 
that when even such witnesses, though recanting their faith 
to save their lives, and though long privy to all the counsels 
and the habits of those who bore the name of Christians, 
could disclose nothing that militated against it in a moral 
view, or justified their condemnation to death, the Roman 
governor, in the full exercise of official zeal, scrupled not to 
try whether torture might not extort from female weakness 
some farther disclosure ; yet there was nothing found but, 
as the polished heathen chose to term it, an evil and extrav- 
agant superstition. It would have implied a culpable dere- 
liction of duty, and an ignorance inexcusable in a Roman 
governor, had he needed any evidence to prove that which, 
on his own showing, must have been patent to all. And no 
witnesses were called to prove the prevalence of Christian- 
ity at a time when it already threatened the religion of the 
empire with destruction. But, from his own knowledge of 
facts, which, from their very nature, were notorious, and, at 
the same time, so important to the state as to call forth such 
an appeal to the emperor, Pliny, while he takes credit to 
himself for having somewhat mitigated the evil, broadly and 
unequivocally relates that Christianity, which he terms a 
superstition, was spread like a contagion, not only in cities 
and towns, but also in country villages, and had affected 
many of each sex, of every age, and of every rank. The 
temples had been almost forsaken, the holy solemnities had 
been long intermitted, and few purchasers of the sacrifice 
had been previously seen, till brought back by persecution 
to paganism. 

The policy of the emperor of Rome, like that of the gov- 
ernor of Bithynia, was to reclaim the Christians to idolatry. 
And, according to the answer of Trajan, those who, on ac- 
cusation, should renounce all faith in Christ, and give proof 
of abjuring it by offering supplications to the gods, were to 
become the objects of imperial clemency. But the mandate 
was otherwise brief, that those who refused to abjure were 
to be punished. The name of Christian, if not renounced, 
was of itself a crime, the proof of which was followed by 
punishment. 

A single case or experiment serves to illustrate a prin- 
ciple ; and a single decision by the supreme authority estab- 
lishes the law. An epistle from a Roman governor, such as 
that of Pliny, and the rule of an emperor, in answer, like 
Trajan's-— two of the ablest, the best, and the most humane 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 169 

rulers that the Roman empire in those times could boast of — 
may suffice, in addition to the testimony of Tacitus, corrobora- 
ted by that of others, to illustrate the condition of Christians 
and the prevalence of the gospel in the earliest ages of the 
church. 

• But we are not restricted to their testimony alone. Our 
next witness of this class is the next emperor. The edict 
of Trajan sufficed for the legal condemnation of those who 
were justly chargeable with the name of Christian, and who 
were convicted of inflexible obstinacy, worthy of punish- 
ment, by adhering to their faith ; but the same imperial edict 
which thus legalized and enjoined their condemnation was 
not sufficient to restrain the popular violences against them, 
nor to guard against the danger that pagans might suffer in 
their stead. And Adrian, the immediate successor of Tra- 
jan, importuned by Serenius Granianus, the proconsul, and 
moved, it may be, by the " rational, eloquent, and persuasive 
apologies" of Quadratus and Aristides, issued a rescript to 
Minucius Fundanus, the proconsul of Asia, permitting the 
people of the province to appear publicly and to charge the 
Christians in a legal manner, but strictly prohibiting them 
from proceeding against them by importunate demands and 
loud clamour only.* 

Besides the rescript of Adrian, quoted at length by Lard- 
ner, a letter of the same emperor to Servianus the consul 
(A. D. 134), his sister's husband, is preserved by Vopiscus, 
one of the writers of the Augustan history, from which let- 
ter it appears, to adopt the remarks of Lardner, " that the 
Christians were numerous at Alexandria and in other parts 
of Egypt when Adrian was in that country ; which certainly 
is very remarkable, that in a century after the resurrection 
of Jesus he should have so many followers in Asia and 
Egypt, as is manifest from this one emperor's authentic wri- 
tings. Without any countenance from the civil government, 
and under a great deal of opposition from it, as well as from 

*" By ' importunate demands and loud clamours,' or, in other words, by 
* clamorous petitions,' learned men generally understand the popular cry of 
those times, ' The Christians to the lions.' Nor was it an unusual thing, 
as Valesius observes in his note upon the place, for the people at Rome or 
in the provinces, in the time of public shows, when they were got together 
in the theatre, by loud cries and a tumultuous behaviour to gain their will 
of the presidents, and even of the emperor himself. This method had 
been practised against the Christians. And it is likely that men were 
often brought before the presidents without distinct proofs. The emperor 
was apprehensive that evil-minded men should sometimes hurry on to death 
men who were not Christians. Therefore he directs the proconsul that 
none should be punished as Christians without a fair and public trial be- 
fore himself in court." — Lardner, vol. vii., p. 94, 95. And thus were be- 
lievers in Jesus both hated of all men, and brought before kings and rulers for 
his name's sake. 

p 



170 OP THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS 

most other ranks of men, and especially from the lower sort 
of people, Christ's bishops were already become as consid- 
erable as the priests of Serapis." 

Such was the notoriety of the sufferings of Christians, the 
spirit, unconquerable by pain and unchecked by the love of 
life, with which they triumphed over tribulation, and bore 
their testimony in unshaken faithfulness unto death, that, in 
the close of the first century and the beginning of the second, 
they formed the butt of ridicule to the man of wit, and af- 
forded ready illustrations of seeming obstinacy and madness 
to such moralists as heathenism could boast of. The vol- 
untary martyrdom of Christians formed to Martial the point 
of an epigram. And no folly could seem greater to a man of 
wit and of the world, than that men should submit to torture 
and to death when a word from their own lips would have 
saved them. Epictetus, the celebrated moralist, unversed 
in motives that could change selfishness into charity and over- 
master the love of life, could only, in his spiritless moral 
science, which felt not the sustaining power of a Divine prin- 
ciple, attribute the last trial and triumph of faith to habit or 
to madness, as the best solution he could guess at of the 
moral phenomenon. " Is it possible," he asks, " that a man 
may arrive at this temper, and become indifferent to those 
things, from madness or from habit, as the Galileans ?"* The 
same unshaken fortitude, in testifying unto the death, con- 
tinued to characterize the believers in Christ during the first 
centuries of our era, while faith in Christ was tried by per- 
secution. And Marcus Aurelius ascribes it to obstinacy : 
" Let this preparation of the mind (for death) arise from its 
own judgment, and not from obstinacy, like the Christians."] 

But it was not alone by their fortitude in suffering that 
Christians in these early and trying times were a " peculiar 
people," distinguished, according to the testimony of their 
enemies, from a world lying in wickedness. It is written in 
the gospel that Jesus said, " By this shall all men know that 
ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." And a 
heathen, describing the general character which Christians 
bore, and marking a peculiarity no less singular and striking 
than their constancy in death and their spirit that rose above 
the fear of it, thus testifies concerning them : 

"It is incredible what expedition they use when any of 
their friends are known to be in trouble. In a word, they 
spared nothing upon such an occasion; for these miserable 
men have no doubt that they shall be immortal and live for 
ever : therefore they contemn death, and many surrender 
themselves to sufferings. Moreover, their first lawgiver has 

* Lardner's Credibility, vol. vii., p. 88. Stereotype edition, 
t Marc. Aurel. Med., 1. xi., c. 3, cited by Lardner, Paley, &c. 



OP CHRISTIANITY. 17,1 

taught them that they are all brethren, when once they have 
turned and renounced the gods of the Greeks, and worship 
this master of theirs, who was crucified, and engage to live 
according to their laws. They have also a sovereign con- 
tempt for all the things of this world, and look upon them 
as common, and trust one another with them without any 
particular security."* 

The force of unimpeachable evidence is such, that even 
the skeptical historian is constrained to admit that "the prim- 
itive Christian, 1 ' to use the words of Gibbon, " demonstrated 
his faith by his virtues." He relates that they were " inured 
to chastity, temperance, economy, and all the sober and do- 
mestic virtues ;" and that they were exercised in " the habits 
of humility, meekness, and patience. The more they were 
persecuted, the more closely they adhered to each other. 
Their mutual charity and unsuspecting confidence has been 
remarked by infidels." And, according to his standard of 
holiness, " their errors were derived from an excess of vir- 
tue."! 

In investigating the origin and rise of Christianity in the 
world, we thus find, without reference to a single Christian 
authority, that, at a time when, according both to Jewish and 
heathen historians, the expectation, founded on ancient 
prophecies, of one coming from Judea who should reign over 
the nations, was universal over the whole East, Jesus Christ, 
the author of the Christian faith, from whom Christians took 
their name, was condemned to death as a criminal, and was 
crucified in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, and while Pontius 
Pilate was procurator of Judea. The Christian religion, 
having originated in that country, was speedily propagated 
among distant nations, extended to the farthest extremities 
of Asia Minor, and reached unto Rome, where it numbered 
a vast multitude of believers in the space of thirty years 
after the death of its founder. In a single province, the con- 
verts to the faith of Christ were so numerous within the pe- 
riod of forty years thereafter, that the heathen temples were 
deserted, and the sacrifices remained unpurchased, buyers 
being wanting to purchase the very meat that had been of- 
fered to idols. Christianity thus prevailed notwithstanding 
the relentless persecutions to which its professors were sub- 
jected. The very name of Christian exposed them to oblo- 
quy, contempt, and every indignity, as also to the greatest of 
bodily sufferings, and to death in the most savage forms. 
Many voluntarily confessed that they were Christians, when 
their own word was thus made the sure warrant for their 
execution; and neither threat nor torture could constrain 

* Luciande Morte Peregrini, t. i., p. 565, ed. Graev. Lardner, vii., 279. 
f Hist, of Decline and Fall of Roman Empire, vol. ii., p. 318, 319. 



172 OP THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS 

them to speak evil of the name of Jesus, or bow down to an 
idol. To be accused and to be convicted of being a Chris- 
tian was a crime punishable with death ; and yet when life, 
thus forfeited, was proffered at the seemingly easy price of 
any act of recantation, they chose rather that their bodies 
should be impaled, or burned, or torn to pieces by the wild 
beasts, than deny their Master ; and that their lips should be 
sealed for ever rather than utter one word to disclaim the 
faith of a Christian. While such evidence is given of the 
time and the manner of Christ's death, and of the rapid and 
wide diffusion of his faith, after a momentary suspension 
subsequently to that event, and while such testimony is borne 
to the faithfulness in sufferings which characterized the 
Christians to the astonishment of their enemies, their moral 
character is also drawn in fairer terms than they themselves 
would have boasted of, though merely descriptive of their 
practices and habits, as taken from the life, by those who ca- 
luminated their creed. Their enemies being witnesses, there 
was no offence with which they were chargeable, or of 
which, after the severest and most inquisitorial scrutiny, 
they could be found guilty, but that alone of the reputed 
crime of being addicted and devoted to a vile and pernicious 
superstition — pernicious only, it would seem, to sin in them- 
selves, and to the prevalence of idolatry and vice in the 
world. Even the exercise of their religion, on the showing 
of their persecutors, interfered not with the duties of life — 
for it was before daybreak that they met to worship their 
Saviour and their God. And such was their obedience to 
the powers that were, even though idolatrous and persecu- 
ting, that, when commanded, they desisted from this practice. 
The only obligation* by which they were mutually bound 
was the sacred one, as an act of their faith, of abjuring the 
commission of sin. And they were not less distinguished 
by the manner in which they discharged the active duties, 
as well as the passive virtues, of their Christian profession. 
Their fearlessness and contempt of death, their voluntary 
and ready surrender of themselves to penal sufferings, not 
generated by stoical apathy or affected insensibility, were 
united to the tenderest sympathy for their brethren in dis- 
tress, marked by a disinterestedness which spared nothing, 
and an alacrity in relieving them which seemed incredible 
to their enemies. Having renounced the gods of the Greeks, 
and worshipping their Master who was crucified, they en- 
gaged to live according to his laws as brethren, which their 
lawgiver had said that all believers were. And the saying 
might as well have been rife among the heathen, behold 
how Christians love ! as with equal truth it could be said, be- 
hold how Christians can die ! 

Such, on the testimony of our enemies, being the origin 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 173 

of the Christian name, and the novelty at that period of the 
Christian doctrine ; such the opposition it encountered, its 
author cut off, despised by men and abhorred by the nation, 
the kings of the earth setting themselves against him ; and, 
the shepherd having been smitten and the sheep scattered 
abroad, his followers, like himself, persecuted unto the death, 
and, while instructing many, falling by the sword, and by 
flame, and by captivity, and by spoil, many days (at the very 
period immediately subsequent to the time when the sanc- 
tuary of strength in Jerusalem was polluted, the daily sacri- 
fice taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate 
set up) ; and, notwithstanding this opposition, such also being 
the early, rapid, and extensive prevalence of Christianity in 
the world, and such its unmatched power over the spirits of 
men, as manifested by the life and by the death of those who 
truly embraced it; and the fact being notorious that kings 
have since seen and arisen, and that princes have worshipped 
that selfsame person who was a servant of servants, and 
whose light hath gone forth unto the Gentiles ; might not 
the question of the Messiahship of Jesus, in an appeal to 
Moses and the prophets, be closed at once as soon as the 
history of Christianity is but just opened! And, the facts 
being clear, and the word of prophecy being sure, may we 
not see concerning Israel, Jerusalem, and Jesus and his gos- 
pel, that, as Moses threatened, God has required it of the 
Jews, because they would not hearken unto the prophet, like 
unto himself, raised up from their brethren, into whose mouth 
God put his words, and who spake to them in his name ; 
that Jesus is the Messiah, who w r as cut off before the city and 
sanctuary were destroyed; that the desolations which were de- 
termined until the consummation are those which yet con- 
tinue ; that the land was smitten ivith a curse, and the Jews 
scattered among all nations, because their hearts were not 
turned at the word of the Messenger of the covenant ; and 
that, when Jesus was despised and rejected of men, the scrip- 
ture was fulfilled, and the everlasting covenant was broken! 

But, reserving for a more ample and final demonstration 
the fulfilment of the prophecies concerning the Messiah, the 
most fastidious reader may admit that the farther advance, 
by one little and continuous step, may now be made with the 
most unscrupulous and unchallengeable freedom, viz., that 
of comparing those facts which heathen historians and writers 
of the highest repute have so clearly set before us with those 
which are recorded in the Christian scriptures. 

But the task, after all, may be deemed superfluous ; for every 
child who has read the New Testament with understanding 
must see, and might show at once, that the historical and 
scriptural accounts are precisely accordant in every particu- 
lar j and, to every interrogatory concerning them, might sup- 
PS 



174 OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS 

ply a response from the written word. Of the time, place, 
and manner of the origin of the Christian faith, there is the 
most entire agreement between the enemies of the cross and 
the disciples of Jesus. Are we told that, during the procura- 
torship of Pontius Pilate at Jerusalem, the capital of Judea, 
Christ was put to death as a malefactor, or judicially con- 
demned, and that belief in a crucified Master was the faith of 
Christians ? In the writings of the evangelists we read the 
trial, hear the sentence passed by Pontius Pilate, and have 
the scene of the crucifixion set before us ; while we also learn 
from the Christian writings that the cross, which was fool- 
ishness to the Greeks, is the glory of Christians. Are we 
told in profane records that Christianity was first propagated 
in Judea? We learn from scripture that the gospel was first 
preached unto the House of Israel, and that the apostles, to 
whom the office was assigned of preaching it unto all nations, 
were commanded to begin at Jerusalem. Was there, within 
the space of thirty years after the death of Christ, a vast 
multitude of converts in the city of Rome 1 We may read 
an epistle addressed, before that time, " to all that be at Rome, 
beloved of God, called to be saints ;" and we learn that Paul 
dwelt two whole years in that city teaching the things which 
concern the Lord Jesus Christ. Was Christianity reckoned 
a pestilent superstition, and ranked among the vile and abom- 
inable things that flowed from every quarter unto Rome? 
The truth of the allegation is admitted without disguise. 
" We are made as the filth of the earth, and are the offscour- 
ings of all things unto this day."* And were its votaries the 
victims of the most cruel sufferings, at public spectacles be- 
fore the citizens of Rome ? Hear their own testimony of all 
such things, as neither new nor uncommon concerning them : 
" Ye were made a gazing-stock both by reproaches and af- 
flictions, and ye became companions of them that were so 
used." " We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to an- 
gels, and to men."f Did the emperor of Rome drive as a 
charioteer, and personally witness their indignities and suf- 
ferings 1 And did Pliny, the governor, preside at the exam- 
inations of the Christians ? Does Tacitus describe the Chris- 
tians as a detested race, accuse them as guilty of enmity to 
mankind, and pronounce them as deserving of exemplary 
punishment ? And do Pliny and Trajan alike hold them guilty, 
and punishable with death for the unrecanted profession of 
their faith, and for not speaking evil of the name of Jesus ? 
In each case there is an express confirmation of the words 
of Christ, as recorded by the evangelists, Ye shall be brought 
before kings and rulers for my name's sake. J They shall 
deliver you to be afflicted, and shall kill you ; and ye shall be 

* I Cor. iv., 13. f Heb. x ?? 33 ; 1 Cor, iv., 9. t Juuke xxi., \% 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 175 

hated of all nations for my name's sake.* Did the historian 
record that many were convicted on testimony of others? 
And does the governor of Bithynia relate that there was a 
great defection from the profession of the Christian faith when 
those who " really believed 1 ' could withstand the trying test, 
and bear their testimony unto death, and that the deserted 
temples of paganism began to be filled again by recreant and 
retracting Christians ? And what saith the scripture ? " Then 
shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and 
shall hate one another ; and, because iniquity shall abound, 
the love of many shall wax cold.' 1 ! Did one Roman gov- 
ernor designate Christians as a mad sect 1 Another attrib- 
uted the same name and character to Paul.f Was their de- 
votedness ascribed to madness ? They answer, u The natu- 
ral man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; for 
they are foolishness to him. And we are fools for Christ's 
sake. If we be beside ourselves, it is to God."§ Was a dis- 
tinction made, in one province, when all else had indiscrim- 
inately suffered, between the Roman citizens and other be- 
lievers in Christ, and were the former sent unto Rome ? Even 
so, in another, a preacher of the gospel claimed the privilege 
of a Roman citizen, appealed unto Caesar, and unto Caesar he 
was sent. Were Christians described as miserable men, who 
had no doubt that they would be immortal, and live for ever? 
They answer to the statement and the charge, " If in this life 
only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most mis- 
erable. "|| " Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, 
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory. "^[ " For thy sake we are killed all the day long, we 
are counted as sheep for the slaughter."** Were Christians, 
in short, subjected, because of their profession, and notwith- 
standing the harmlessness of their lives, to all manner of 
tortures, as Tacitus relates, within the period of thirty years 
from the time of the death of Christ, as that date is fixed 
by the historian himself? And how, in accordance with this, 
do we read, in the written word, of the punishments and dis- 
tresses to which Christians, on the first propagation of their 
faith, were subjected during the selfsame period, the lifetime 
of the evangelists, disciples, and apostles of Jesus ? They 
are thus addressed, as men familiarized with suffering : " Be- 
loved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which 
is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto 
you," &c.ft " Call to remembrance the former days, in which, 
after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflic- 
tions," &c.JJ Or, if we follow an apostle through his abun- 

* Mat. xxiv., 9. f Ibid, xxiv., 9, 12. t Acts xxvi., 25. 

§ 1 Cor. iv., 10 ; 2 Cor. v., 13. II 1 Cor. xv., 19. 

IT 2 Cor. iv., 17. ** Ps. xliv., 22. Rom. viii., 36. 

ft 1 Pet. iv., 12. |$ Heb. x., 32. 



176 OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS 

dant labours, we see him thus compassed about with perils 
and tribulations : " In stripes above measure, in prisons more 
frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I 
forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once 
was I stoned : in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in 
perils of robbers, in perils of mine own countrymen, in perils 
by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilder- 
ness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren ; in 
weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and 
thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness."* And, 
finally, if heathens were astonished beyond measure at the 
fortitude of Christians, their intrepidity amid dangers, their 
fearlessness of death, and their voluntary sacrifice of life, 
some better solution of the unparalleled enigma may be found 
in the Scriptures than what a heathen moralist could devise 
and it may there be discovered that, in virtue of faith in the 
name they never would deny, the dread of death, as an en- 
emy judged rightly, was overcome by the assured hope of 
immortality. " We are troubled on every side, yet not dis- 
tressed," they could say ; " we are perplexed, but not in de- 
spair ; persecuted, but not forsaken ; cast down, but not de- 
stroyed : always bearing about the dying of the Lord Jesus, 
that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body ; 
know that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise us 
up also by Jesus, and shall present us with you." " For which 
cause we faint not ; but, though our outward man perish, yet 
the inward man is renewed day by day," &c. " We our- 
selves glory in you in the churches of God, for your patience 
and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye en- 
dure," &c. " We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God; 
and not only so, but we glory in tribulations also ; knowing 
that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, 
and experience hope." And this was the language, unwont- 
ed, if not unknown before, of the primitive Christians ; and 
not the language only or the idle vaunt of the lips, but, though 
many not sound in the faith faltered when brought to the 
stake to enunciate the words, the principle also which, our 
enemies being judges, multitudes carried into practical ef- 
fect : " They may kill me, but they cannot hurt me. Neither 
hold I my life dear, that I may finish my course with joy." 
But not only is the agreement perfect between the histor- 
ical and scriptural accounts of the origin and rise of Chris- 
tianity, and of the sufferings to which, as might well have 
beseemed their name and calling, the disciples of a crucified 
Master were exposed from the promulgation of their faith 
and their aggressions against the reign of idolatry and the 
kingdom of darkness ; but the lives of Christians also, as 

* 2 Cor. xi., 24^27 ; ib. iv., 8, &c. ; 2 Thess. i., 4 ; Rom. v., 3, 4. 5. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 177 

drawn by heathens, give such a demonstrative proof of the 
power of their faith, and such a practical illustration of the 
precepts of Jesus, as, without the need of a special compar- 
ison, shows them at once to have been a living epistle known 
and read of all men. All history may be safely challenged 
to produce an instance ever elsewhere seen of human nature 
in so fair a form, or of any society of men besides, except 
under the same influence, ever known as so " lovely and of 
good report." Well might a deistical poet, in false pity of 
their weakness, testify that they cherished the sure hope of 
immortality, while the testimony which he gives of their lives 
shows that it was a hope which purified the heart, and that 
that faith was theirs which at once overcometh the world and 
worketh by love. Their meeting together on a stated day to 
sing hymns unto Christ as a God shows that they forgot not 
the assembling of themselves together ; yet their desisting, 
when enjoined, even from this practice or from their feasts 
of love, showed also that they were obedient to existing 
powers or authorities, so far as compliance could possibly be 
rendered without relinquishing their faith in Christ and the 
worship of God, who, unlike the deities to which they would 
not fall down, heareth and seeth in secret. Their mutual 
compact and obligation, by a sacrament, to abstain from all 
sinful practices, was only an exercise of that love which 
worketh no ill to his neighbour, and was but setting their 
seal to that bond of the Christian covenant, to which, as ap- 
pears from their sacred writings, they believed that God had 
already set his seal. " The Lord knoweth them that are his ; 
and let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart 
from iniquity." Their " sovereign contempt for all the things 
of this world" might be deemed the veriest folly in the world- 
ling's estimation ; yet, in confirmation of the truth of the 
charge, it may indeed be said, that when these things came 
into competition or comparison with the knowledge of Christ, 
the love of God, and the hope of glory, an apostle or a true 
disciple of Jesus could suffer the loss of them all, and, ac- 
counting them but dung that they might win Christ, hold 
them thus in as great disparagement and contempt, as ever 
any of those whose god is the world, and who mind and who 
love earthly things, cast upon the blessings that are spiritual 
and eternal. The testimony of the enemies of Christians is 
conjoined with their own, in one word, that they had all 
things in common. And while they suffered joyfully the 
spoiling of their goods, their disinterestedness and alacrity 
in serving and relieving one another testified that there were 
uses of wealth of which they were not so ignorant as the 
world around them. And the crowning and characteristic 
virtue of Christian love was no less the marvel of the hea- 
then than the mark of their faith. By having love one to 



178 OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS 

another they were to be known of all men as the disciples 
of Jesus : and by that they were known of all. " Having 
turned from idols and renounced the gods of the Greeks," in 
the words both of a profane writer and of a Christian apostle, 
they were actuated by new motives as well as professed a 
new faith; selfishness was abjured together with idolatry; 
love w T as practised where Christ was received as their law- 
giver; the new commandment which he gave unto them was 
that they should love one another; and while from others 
they could " bear all things," among themselves they lived 
and loved as " brethren." And, to close at length, and yet 
hastily and prematurely, the obvious analogy between the 
Christian precepts as recorded in the gospel, and the char- 
acter of the primitive Christians as detailed by their perse- 
cutors or adversaries, they so lived according to their scrip- 
tures, as having their conversation honest among the Gen- 
tiles, as putting to silence the ignorance of foolish men with 
their well-doing, as adorning the doctrine of their Saviour in 
all things, so that, though some falsely accused them, he who 
was of the contrary part had no evil truly to say against them, 
their enemies being judges. 

It would not be an object of rational research to seek for 
an acknowledgment of the Messiahship of Christ and of the 
truth of his religion from among those men, whatever might 
have been their talent or their station, who adhered to pa- 
ganism, and consequently held the Christian faith, as a system 
of religious belief, in contemptuous abhorrence. They give 
all that could have been expected at their hands, and with- 
hold nothing that was needful to be known from them. And 
their testimony of itself has qualities that could scarcely 
have pertained to the word of a Christian, however true. 
For, while even a martyr could not have borne better or 
clearer testimony to facts connected with the rise of Chris- 
tianity, or more accordant with the scriptural record than 
that which is concentrated in the evidence of heathens — 
whether we consult historians, or a governor, or emperors, 
or moralists, or an epigrammatist, or a satirist, or a descrip- 
tive poet, or recanting Christians, or an imperial apostate — 
believers in Christ could not have testified from personal ex- 
perience of the feelings of those who hated his name and 
persecuted his cause ; nor could they have exposed the sen- 
timents of their betrayers, revilers, and murderers so fully 
and freely as these have been told by their own lips or writ- 
ten by their own hands. This evidence comes more directly, 
immediately, and conclusively from themselves. And the 
testimony of enemies, to facts corroborative of the truths 
they gainsay, is of all others the most conclusive, and may 
well stifle all doubts and close all controversy in respect to 
the truths which it confirms and could not contravene. And 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 179 

when the most perfect concurrence subsists, as if things op- 
posite to each other were here integrated into one, between 
the pagan and Christian documents, respecting the origin and 
rise of Christianity, the fate of its author, the nature of the 
doctrine, the mode of its promulgation, and the manner of 
its reception ; whether, as diametrically opposite, by those 
who opposed or those who received it ; and the rapidity and 
extent of its prevalence against all opposition, and the char- 
acter and the sufferings, alike uncommon or unparalleled, of 
those who maintained its truth unto the death, it needs some- 
thing else than the ordinary exercise of a sound and unbi- 
ased judgment to discover on what pretext or shadow of 
reason these statements, thus substantiated on the most in- 
dependent testimony, can be discredited ; or how the very 
existence of Christianity, in its present form, and extent, and 
paramount influence on the fate of the world, could possibly 
be accounted for on any other supposition than on the ad- 
mission of the truth of the only history of its origin and early 
progress in the world, which is or has ever been known to 
exist, whether written by friend or by foe. 

As ancient history, deserving of the name, began its la- 
bours at the very time when the Old Testament history 
closed, and when prophecy, itself sealed up, required in every 
future age a confirmation of its truth ; so it is, perhaps, not 
less striking and important that such a narrative should 
have been given as that of the celebrated historian Tacitus' 
description of the progress of Christianity and of the perse- 
cution of Christians, at the very time when the New Testa- 
ment history ceased, and when the evangelists and disciples 
of Christ, as their most violent adversaries admit, had com- 
mitted unto writings, acknowledged by Christians, the his- 
tory of the life of Christ and of the acts of his apostles. As 
both dates are fixed by Tacitus, and, it may be added, by 
universal consent, the space of only thirty years intervened 
from the death of Christ to the persecution of the Christians 
under Nero. These two dates may be held undeniably 
fixed. Within that brief interval, during which the gospel 
was propagated to a marvellous extent, the evangelists and 
disciples of Christ lived and wrote. And some of the New 
Testament Scriptures, such as those of John, universally 
acknowledged to have been the last of the apostles, were 
not written till after the time to which the description given 
by Tacitus refers. 

Some such history, therefore, there must have been of the 
origin, rise, and progress of Christianity, as that which is 
recorded by the evangelists and disciples of Christ, and as 
may be gathered, in connexion with these, from the various 
epistles addressed to Christian churches, if the circumstances 
connected with the rise of a new religion of most rapid 



180 OF THE GENUINENESS 

growth had not from the beginning been consigned over to 
everlasting oblivion. Every impartial and reflecting reader 
must see that it needs exactly such details as those which 
the Christian Scriptures present, in all their clearness, sim- 
plicity, detailed and varied narratives, to fill up the history of 
Christianity and of its progress during the short interve- 
ning space from its commencement, so as to accord in these 
respects with the facts which are implied or explicitly de- 
tailed in the narrative of Tacitus, and subsequently in the 
epistle of Pliny, as well as with the later testimony of more 
bitter enemies of the cross. Instead of exaggerating the 
inroads on paganism made by the gospel, even as soon as 
its career was well begun, and drawing with a friendly and 
too partial hand the character of their brethren, or painting, 
as suffering humanity no less sorely than unjustly tried 
might be supposed to have done, in too dark colours the 
hatred and cruelty of their enemies ; had one jot been abated 
in any of these respects by the penmen of the New Testa- 
ment, in so far some truth must have been modified or con- 
cealed, which, as it does stand in the written word, is essen- 
tial to a perfect concord with the averments of those who 
had neither part nor lot in the matter, but to set themselves 
against the truth, which their evidence, so far and so strongly 
as it can, thus directly and explicitly confirms* 



CHAPTER VI. 

OF THE GENUINENESS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES, AS 
WRITTEN BY THE EVANGELISTS AND APOSTLES OF JESUS. 

Numberless are the historical facts that meet with an un- 
hesitating assent, for which no evidence can be adduced at 
all comparable in abundance and precision with that which* 
in the merely preliminary view we have already taken, is so, 
palpably borne to the origin and propagation of the Christian 
faith. And yet, instead of having exhausted the subject, we ; 
have scarcely entered on the Christian testimony, which 
opens up a field too wide to be explored, and presents us with 
evidence too abundant to be adduced in a summary treatise 
like the present, Happily, the task is needless, for the work 
has been already done in such a manner as to render all 
other labour concerning it superfluous. And, if we mistake 
not, this, in right order, is its proper place, the unassailable 
position it maintains, or in which its evidence is, without 
controversy, irresistible, AncJ were the reader, unsparing 



OP TLE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 181 

of labour, in the true spirit of research, to enter, if needful 
for satisfaction the most complete, into the thorough exami- 
nation of all the component parts of this redundant demon- 
stration, and to peruse the accumulated testimonies from the- 
earliest ages that are collected and arranged ready to his 
hand, and open to his inspection in Lardner's Credibility of 
the Gospel, or in a more condensed and engaging form in 
the still more accessible pages of Paley's Evidences, he 
would not then need a prompter to tell that the only pru- 
dence or wisdom, according to that of this world, which un- 
believers could display, and the only resource to which they 
could betake themselves, was to evade the testimony. 

The evidence borne by enemies, and its perfect accord- 
ance with scriptural history, prepare the way for the more 
full and direct witness concerning their religion which could 
come from believers alone. The view taken of Christianity 
by its enemies could only be external. They could tell no 
more than what they saw in looking on the outer sanctuary. 
They could only represent what they witnessed in others 
whose faith was opposite to their own, and whose conduct 
in life, and bearing in death, baffled the comprehension of 
the wisest among them. And if we seek a more minute 
and intimate knowledge of the nature and history of Chris- 
tianity, and of the credentials of the authenticity of the gos- 
pel as the writings held sacred by Christians, it may best be 
obtained from those who best can tell — who had the knowl- 
edge to communicate of the faith they cherished and the 
writings they believed. It is not the man who stands with- 
out, and who has never entered an edifice, who is asked to 
detail and to describe all that is to be found within it ; but 
he who claims the habitation as his own may fully disclose 
that of which the other was unconscious. Even so, al- 
though heathens may best tell of their own feelings towards 
Christians, it is not for them fully to expound what believers 
knew concerning their scriptures. But those to whom these 
writings were addressed, and to whom they were committed 
to be handed down from generation to generation in all the 
churches, are better able to testify concerning those scrip- 
tures which their enemies, as will be fully shown, acknowl- 
edged as their own. And it is to those who believed in the 
Scriptures that we have to look for such full and positive ev- 
idence as may authenticate the New Testament, as indeed 
the writings of the evangelists and disciples of Jesus, and 
give proof of their identity from age to age, that from hence 
we may learn, more fully than heathens could unfold, the 
history of the life as Well as of the death of Christ, the na- 
ture as well as the progress of his religion, the principles as 
well as the profession of his disciples, the faith they cher- 
ished, as well as the character they sustained and the trials 

Q 



182 OF THE GENUINENESS 

they endured— and all that man may competently record of 
Christianity — in order that that higher testimony surpassing 
human, which had before been given by inspiration of God, 
may be brought to bear upon the gospel of his Son. 

Paley, in the ninth chapter of his Evidences, enters at 
large upon the proof of the authenticity of the Historical 
Scriptures, by adducing quotations from them by ancient 
Christian writers ; by showing the peculiar respect with 
which they were quoted ; that the Scriptures were in very 
early times collected into a distinct volume ; that they were 
distinguished by appropriate names and titles of respect; 
that they were publicly read and expounded in the religious 
assemblies of the early Christians; that commentaries, &c, 
were anciently written upon the Scriptures ; that they were 
received by ancient Christians of different sects and persua- 
sions ; and that formal catalogues of authentic Scriptures 
were published, in all which our present Gospels were in- 
cluded, <fcc. 

Without enlarging on each or any of these grounds of a 
conclusive argument in demonstration of the genuineness of 
the New Testament Scriptures, it may here suffice to take 
such a cursory view of the subject as may serve to show 
the connexion of the various parts of the Christian evidence, 
and that nothing is wanting which sober reason could re- 
quire to elucidate the truth that the identity and genuineness 
of the Christian Scriptures may be traced by a connected 
chain of indisputable evidence from the apostolic age to the 
present day. 

However great and varied may be the differences, in re- 
spect to religious belief, that unhappily prevail among the 
professing disciples of Jesus ; whatever may be the latitude 
which they allow or practise in their expositions of the New 
Testament ; nay, whether some may suffer their reason, as 
they say, or rather their imagination, as the result may tes- 
tify, to sit in judgment on the written word ; or whether 
others assign to a man, or to a collected body of men, the 
office of infallible interpretation ; there yet is one thing in 
which their enemies cannot charge them with disunion, viz., 
that the Scriptures now in our hands were then possessed 
by the primitive Christians, and are avowedly the rule of 
faith to every sect and in every age of the church. The 
authenticity of Scripture is alike indisputable among them ; 
and, where diversity of sentiment otherwise prevails, there 
is here but one opinion. To waver in mind in this one re- 
spect would be to waver in the Christian faith. Christianity 
is virtually renounced when any other gospel is preached or 
believed than that of the New Testament ; and, whenever 
it is disbelieved, faith it disavowed. The whole Christian 
church — though unhappily presenting to view the form of 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 183 

the scattered fragments of a mutilated and divided body, 
rather than joined member to member and united to one 
head — has here but a single and undivided testimony ; nor 
throughout the whole of Christendom, where unbelievers do 
not raise up their voice against the truth as it is in Jesus, is 
there one murmur of dissent. 

This happy harmony, unbroken amid minor discords, may 
serve to illustrate what is meant by the testimony of the 
church, as borne in every age to the authenticity of the 
Scriptures. Men may discuss their various creeds, and mark 
the shades of their opinions in many high matters touched on 
in Scripture, which may surpass the powers of human reason 
adequately to define, or, perhaps, fully to conceive. And thus 
schisms have arisen from the earliest ages in the church, by 
looking to a part rather than the whole counsel of God ; as 
if, instead of seeking to be clothed with the righteousness of 
Christ, believers in his name, like the Roman soldiers who 
crucified him, had parted his garments among them. But 
there is still a vesture without a seam which has not been 
torn. The integrity of the Scriptures has been maintained 
by all Christians ; all profess to revere them as the sacred 
oracles, and make to them their common appeal. Neither 
Christian, nor Mohammedan, nor skeptic, denies that the 
Koran was written by Mohammed, and is the book which be- 
lievers in him have ever specially regarded as holy. And it 
is no great demand which in the first place may be urged, 
to hear the testimony of the universal Christian church in 
every age, that the New Testament contains the doctrine 
of Jesus, and has ever been the record of the faith of his dis- 
ciples. The whole Christian church being agreed as to the 
authenticity and genuineness of the Scriptures ; and there 
being no other history, in the present or any former age, of 
the origin*and rise of Christianity, save that which they con- 
tain, a slight glance at some of the most important and es- 
sential points of the testimony, borne from the earliest ages, 
to the genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures, may, 
perhaps, go far to satisfy the most scrupulous inquirer that 
this portion of the evidence is as strong and complete as any 
other. 

After the ages appropriately termed dark, during which the 
Scriptures were secluded from common view, the Reforma- 
tion arose with the republication of the Gospels. Scholastic 
jargon, miscalled science, yielded to rational investigation ; 
and, in religious inquiry, legendary lore yielded to the study 
of the Bible and of the writings of the Fathers, as the earli- 
est of the Christian writers were termed. Manuscripts of 
the New Testament and of the Old were drawn from clois- 
tered recesses, in which the most ancient of them had been 
preserved with scrupulous, if not also superstitious care, and 



184 OF THE GENUINENESS 

in which copies of them had been multiplied age after age 
with devoted carefulness and zeal ; the letter of the scrip- 
tures having been preserved and perpetuated when their 
spirit had been lost. Even the perversion of Christian truth 
was overruled for the promotion of the Christian testimony. 
The faithful transcription of the Scriptures was deemed a 
ivork of merit. Though their publication had been prohibited, 
and the translations were sometimes denounced by papal au- 
thority, yet even the alleged prerogative of infallibility could 
only claim the right of interpreting the written word. The 
strongholds of the popish church, abbeys, cathedrals, monas- 
teries, &c, became in fact, however undesignedly, the store- 
houses of the Christian scriptures ; and those who hid them 
from the world, or read them only in an unknown tongue, 
were made the instruments of preserving their integrity, and 
redoubling their number for the scrutiny and the use of fu- 
ture ages. And the Vatican itself was and is filled with the 
testimonials of the genuineness of these scriptures, which 
no cloisters now can any longer confine. Hundreds of man- 
uscripts, which have been critically and carefully examined 
and compared, so completely set at rest all question of the 
genuineness of the Christian scriptures as such, that the worst 
manuscripts contain every essential truth which forms a por- 
tion of the Christian scheme, or of the history of the gospel 
and the doctrine of Christ and his apostles ; and would per- 
fectly suffice for comparing the events recorded and the doc- 
trines unfolded with the testimony of the prophets concern- 
ing the Messiah. Every copy from every quarter showed 
that the long dormant Scriptures were ever one and the 
same ; and after having been preserved in secret during the 
ages of darkness and violence, and beyond the reach of bar- 
baric influence to desecrate or to destroy them, the Scrip- • 
tures were drawn from their depositories and committed to 
the press. And though that engine of wondrous power has 
been often vainly used against them, it has not only spread 
them throughout the world, and seems to be destined to mul- 
tiply their number still, till the Bible throughout the earth 
shall be plentiful like leaves in the forest ; but as affecting 
their authenticity and the security of their unaltered trans- 
mission to all future ages, it has also, wherever Christian ed- 
ucation prevails, put it in the power of every child to show — 
should such be the case by accident or design in any instance 
— wherever a letter is misplaced or altered. 

Before the period of the Gothic invasion of the Roman 
empire, and the deep and lasting obscuration that settled down 
upon all its provinces, there was a time of light such as the 
world had never previously witnessed. It was not in any se- 
cluded portion of the globe, or at a time when communica- 
tion was fettered and science unknown ; but in one of the 



.- ■'• 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES, 185 

richest provinces of Rome, the garden, as it was termed, of 
the empire, and in the boasted Augustan age, that Christian- 
ity had its origin. It rapidly spread over Greece and Italy, 
the reputed regions of human learning, where the arts and 
elegances of life were greatly cultivated and observed, and 
where, in succession, eloquence had its seat. And, not con- 
fined to these countries, Christianity, which professed to be 
the religion, not of Greece or Rome, but of the human race ; 
which set no exclusive mark upon man, whether barbarian, 
Scythian, bond, or free, and knew no distinction between sav- 
age and civilized, and which drew the dark picture of human 
depravity from the imperial city, was promulgated, and pre- 
vailed in the remote regions as well as in the capital. And 
hence the proofs, not only of the progress of the Gospel, but 
of the uniformity of the faith and genuineness of the Scrip- 
tures, may be drawn from every quarter. The Scriptures, 
which, as they bear, were commanded to be read in all the 
churches wherever Christians existed, were open to the view ; 
and, as the fact itself gives proof, underwent the keen scru- 
tiny of watchful and subtle enemies, so well skilled in de- 
tecting any deception or delusion, that they ingeniously cav- 
illed at what they could not confute. And, from the nature 
of the case, it may be said that the possession of the Scrip- 
tures was essential to the existence and permanence of the 
Christian faith in every place where it had first been incul- 
cated by the disciples of Jesus. Everywhere spoken against 
and persecuted, their bond of union, and the badge of their 
character, was their common faith. And having spread, as 
they did. throughout every region, and gathered converts in 
every city, and also, as Bithynia illustrates, throughout the 
scattered villages and over the face of the country, the Scrip- 
tures were universally, and in every region, their common 
creed ; and hence the uniformity and identity, and the pecu- 
liarity of their character. The Scriptures were believed in 
and revered as the writings of evangelists, containing the 
only accredited histories of the life and doctrine of Jesus 
Christ, and of apostles who had immediately received their 
commission from the author of their faith. The writings of 
the disciples and apostles of Christ were thus universally 
propagated and believed in, as Scriptures given by inspiration 
of God. Whether they in truth were such or not, is not the 
point to be here investigated. But an unimpeachable testi- 
mony bears out the truth, as of any common fact, that they 
were universally received as such from the very earliest ages 
of the church. That such was indeed the case — not pre- 
sumptively merely, and according to the acknowledgment o( 
their enemies, but actually, as attested by direct and positive 
evidence, sach as places the matter clearly before us, and 

Q 2 



186 OF THE GENUINENESS 

might set the question at rest — it is the easiest of all tasks to 
demonstrate. 

No truth, surely, can be more plain, indisputable, and self- 
evident, than that any book which is quoted in another was 
written before it. On this simple and decisive test of the an- 
tiquity of the New Testament Scriptures, they may be traced 
up, with all facility, to the very time at which they were pro- 
fessedly written. And the evidence of their genuineness as 
the Christian Scriptures, received as such from the begin- 
ning, is alike abundant and incontestible. 

Some of the subtlest of the heathens, in primitive times, 
quoted portions from Scripture, which were selected by their 
ingenuity as the best suited to their purpose, in order to re- 
fute them; and started such objections against the doctrines 
of Jesus as in any age may naturally arise in those hearts 
over which the pride of life or the pleasures of the world 
bear sway. But the apparent specks were few on which 
these birds of night, in love with darkness, could alight, com- 
pared to that fair daylight region of truth, as they accounted 
it, which believers in Jesus possessed as their own domain, 
over which they could freely range or expatiate — the whole 
of the Scripture, from which they freely quoted without limit 
or restriction. They revered and loved the credentials of, 
their faith. In explanation of the character given them by 
their enemies, it may be said that they held forth the word 
before them. And their writings prove, what heathens ad- 
mitted, that they held the Scriptures as their own. 

From the period of two centuries after the death of the last 
of the apostles, or the close of the third century of the Chris- 
tian era, the works of Christian writers, then numerous, " are 
as full of texts of Scripture or of references to Scripture as 
the discourses of modern divines." And quotations from 
any other book, in any language, are not once to be com- 
pared in extent with those of the Scriptures alone. It was 
previously remarked, that, had the worst manuscript of the 
New Testament, or that which should be found to be the 
most full of errors or defects, come down alone to our times, 
the means would still have been preserved of learning from 
it all the doctrines of the Gospel and everything essential to 
the Christian faith. Such is the perfect security with which 
the New Testament passed immaculate through the dark 
ages. And it may also be said, with equal truth, as has often 
been stated and never can be refuted, that even were the 
Scriptures lost, or were not a single copy of them to be found 
on earth, the loss might still be supplied, not from any words 
of man, but from quotations of the Scriptures themselves in 
the writings of the Fathers : so amply were they drawn from, 
and so frequently were they resorted to as the sources of 
Divine truth. In either case, it would seem that the prov- 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 187 

idence of God had so ordered it, that the genuineness of his 
word should be put beyond the reach of a single rational 
doubt, whether we look to the multiplicity and agreement of 
the various translations, and versions, and manuscripts of the 
New Testament, or to the profusion with which the very 
words of Scripture are spread over the existing pages of the 
most ancient Christian writers. 

Without challenging respect for all the sayings of the Fa- 
thers, or placing all or any of their opinions, as such, or those 
of any others besides, within the verge of comparison with 
one of the truths of Scripture, it is manifest that, whether 
they elucidate the truth, or whether they may, like more 
modern writers, sometimes darken counsel by words without 
knowledge, yet they could not have quoted from the Scrip- 
tures if these had not previously existed. And it is no less 
obvious, that in all the conflicting opinions which from early 
heresies and schisms arose simultaneously with the prop- 
agation of the Gospel, the Scriptures would not have been 
universally appealed to if they had not been recognised as 
of indisputable authority, and as containing the true and in- 
fallible account of the origin of Christianity and of the doc- 
trine of the cross. 

Within the space of three centuries, paganism, with all its 
authority and pomp, was shaken to pieces and scattered into 
dust through the prevalence and the power, unsustained by 
one carnal weapon, of faith in that Jesus whom it had de- 
spised as a crucified malefactor. And although the church, 
when unassailed from without, became disunited within, and 
the Arian controversy broke the bond of Christian brother- 
hood more than all the previous heresies and schisms, yet 
new proof was thereby added to the authenticity of Scrip- 
ture, which none dared to challenge or controvert, whether 
believers in Christ were persecuted by imperial mandates, or 
an emperor of Rome had a seat in their councils. 

Prior to the time that Christianity became the religion of 
the empire, and when Christian writers abounded, there is 
not a blank for a single generation in the testimony which is 
borne to it from the days of the apostles to those of Con- 
s tan tine. 

It is needless to speak of the numberless scriptural quo- 
tations in the voluminous works of Christian authors after 
the gospel of Jesus became professedly the religion of the 
empire. Commentaries on the Scriptures abounded. Je- 
rome's translation, the Vulgate, is well known. And the Sy- 
rian is still extant of a far earlier date. But these were not 
the only translations of the Christian scriptures in ancient 
times. The gospel was preached unto all nations, and the 
New Testament was translated into many languages. No 
bishop then impeded its progress, nor was it read only in an 



188 OF THE GENUINENESS 

unknown tongue. Eusebius, bishop of Ceesarea, in an ora- 
tion publicly addressed to Constantine, in the city of Con- 
stantinople, while he eloquently illustrates the truth of Chris- 
tianity, specially refers to the prophecies of Jesus concern- 
ing the destruction of Jerusalem and the extension of the 
gospel. And in proof that Christ had fulfilled his word of 
promise that he could make his apostles fishers of men y he 
appeals to the facts, that from humble fishermen they had 
actually become " the teachers of £lm,whole world, and that 
their writings or books were held in so great authority and 
esteem that they had been translated into all languages, as 
well of the barbarians as of the Greeks, throughout the whole 
world, and that they were studied by all nations and be- 
lieved as Divine oracles." Such an argument could not have 
been publicly urged and circulated, without meeting its con- 
futation in every quarter, but on the known and undisputed 
certainty of the fact that various translations of the Scrip- 
tures existed at the time. 

Arnobius and Lactantius, preceding him by only a few 
years, A. D. 300, wrote regular treatises on the truth of the 
Christian religion ; and adopt so exclusively and fully the 
histories of Christ by the evangelists, as to record almost all 
that they had related concerning the Author of their faith. 
In the latter half of the previous century, various successive 
Christian writers in Asia, Egypt, and Europe* — from whose 
works, comments on the Scriptures, and editions of the New 
Testament, it is manifest that " the Scripture histories and 
the same histories were known and received from the one 
side of the Christian world to the other" — bring us up to the 
time of Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, in whose writings 
there are constant and copious " citations from the Scrip- 
tures," or, as he terms them, the Divine Scriptures ; and in 
less than twenty years thereafter — other writers still not 
leaving that brief space unoccupied — we come up to the days 
of the learned and celebrated Origen. But while this con- 
nected evidence is borne by writers holding the office of bish- 
ops and presbyters of the church, in the same interval some 
who were charged with heretical opinions, and who held re- 
spectively contradictory and irreconcilable tenets, though 
trying to wrest the Scriptures to their views, acknowledged 
their authority with equal deference. 

The days of Origen bring us to the period of about one 
hundred and fifty years after the scriptures, according to the 
united testimony of the earliest Christians, were published. 
Of Origen we read as of any modern talented preacher, 
abundant in labours, and earnest in the propagation of Chris- 
tian truth. By special license, as it may be said, he was au- 

* Lardner, vol. hi, Paley, c. ix. x § 1, 15-17, 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 189 

thorized to expound the scriptures, without having been pre- 
viously ordained a presbyter, while visiting Palestine about 
the year 216. He testifies of the scriptures being read in the 
churches, followed by a discourse for explication delivered 
to the people. While preaching was the practice, scripture 
supplied the text. And the testimony, speaking for itself, 
yet remains of many of Origen's discourses or commenta- 
ries upon the scriptures of the New Testament, preached 
sixteen hundred years ago in the assemblies of the church. 
Of the scriptures he frequently speaks, as in familiar and 
well-known terms, the Old and New Testament, the ancient 
and new scriptures, the ancient and new oracles. And he 
refers to them " not as to any private books, or such as are 
read by a few only, but in books read by everybody."* 
" Origen's works afford assurance of the integrity of our 
present copies of the New Testament. And, as Dr. Mill 
says, if we had all his works remaining, who published scho- 
lia, or commentaries, or homilies upon almost all the books 
of the Old and New Testament, we should have before us 
almost the whole text of the Bible, as it was read in his 
time."f 

On the revival of learning, after the invention of printing 
had multiplied copies of the works of the ancients, and be- 
fore the genuineness of the New Testament Scriptures was 
questioned as in more recent times, the early as well as late 
editions of Christian and profane writers were laboriously sup- 
plied with copious indexes, which set forth to view the sub- 
jects treated of, and the authors cited in the respective works. 
And the labour of constructing these, and selecting and clas- 
sifying the quotations, is now available for supplying a pal- 
pable evidence how uniformly and frequently the Christian 
Scriptures were appealed to, and the very words quoted, in 
the earliest ages. "Although," as Paley well remarks, "it 
is of no purpose to single out quotations of Scripture from 
such a writer as Origen, and we might as well make a col- 
lection of the quotations of Scripture in Dr. Clarke's Ser- 
mons," yet the reader may see, from the simple mode of the 
conclusive demonstration which the index to each volume of 
his remaining works supplies, that quotations from Scripture 
are " thickly sown in the works of Origen." And it is well 
worthy of remark, as Lardner has fully shown, that "he ad- 
mitted no other as sacred books besides those in our present 
canon."J See Table. 

* Lardner, vol. ii., p. 516, 522. Paley, ibid. 

f- Lardner, vol. ii, p. 573. J Ibid., p. 577. 



190 



OF THE GENUINENESS 



Quotations from the New Testament in the Extant Works of Origen, 
A. D. 230. 



Matthew 

Mark 

Luke 

John 

Acts 

Romans 

1 Corinthians , 

2 Corinthians . 
Galatians 
Ephesians 
Philippians 
Colossians 

1 Thessalonians 

2 Thessalonians 

1 Timothy 

2 Timothy 
Titus 
Philemon 
Hebrews 
James 

1 Peter 

2 Peter 
1 John 
Jude 
Revelation 



Vol. I. 


Vol. II. 


Vol.111. 


Vol. IV 


152 


206 


735 


259 


15 


18 


94 


68 


74 


102 


308 


165 


118 


132 


175 


350 


21 


32 


50 


44 


89 


98 


111 


433 


120 


169 


161 


170 


50 


58 


51 


79 


30 


41 


32 


47 


29 


28 


39 


39 


9 


23 


13 


23 


18 


22 


24 


27 


7 


13 


18 


10 


7 


3 


10 


6 


15 


21 


30 


26 


9 


20 


10 


16 


3 


3 


7 


5 








3 





26 


51 


40 


37 


1 


11 


2 


6 


9 


12 


17 


12 


2 


2 


O 


1 


13 


24 


13 


27 


3 





2 


1 


3 


6 


25 


26 



823 



1095 



1970 



1877 



No evidence can be more palpable than that of the antiquity 
and genuineness of the New Testament Scriptures, as still 
farther illustrated, in a similar manner, by the writings of 
the earlier fathers. Their extant works only need to be 
opened, and a page, taken at random, to be read, in order to 
see how uniformly the oracles of their faith were consulted 
and quoted in these earlier ages, to a degree seldom equalled 
and never surpassed in the present day. Their writings 
show how full their minds were of the narratives and doc- 
trines contained in the gospel, and how frequently these were 
crowded together in their pages. And, while each sentence 
is a witness, so obvious and voluminous is the evidence, that 
the " index to passages cited 1 ' in their works presents in 
each volume proof after proof, which may be shown and 
seen at a glance, in all the force of figures and all the vivid- 
ness of ocular demonstration. 

Ascending still nearer to the age of the apostles, and tra- 
cing up the stream to the fountain-head of the Christian 
faith, the names of Tertullian and Clement, as they bear tes- 
timony by their existing writings, are conspicuous in the 
early Christian annals. They preceded Origen by thirty 
years. But the short interval between Origen and them 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 191 

" was occupied by no small number of Christian writers," 
whose works remain only partially, or as quoted in later and 
more voluminous writings. Yet in every one of them, as 
they are subsequently specified in a general note, is some 
reference or other to the gospels. One gives an abstract of 
the whole gospel history. Another wrote " an epistle on 
the apparent difference in the genealogies in Matthew and 
Luke, which he endeavours to reconcile by the distinction of 
natural and legal descent, and constructs his hypothesis with 
great industry through the whole series of generations."* 
A third composed a harmony of the four gospels. And 
within the same period, various sects, afterward specified 
in like manner, who were marked by some peculiar opin- 
ions, had their origin, all of whom received and appealed in 
their controversies to the New Testament Scriptures. 

Tertullian preceded Origen thirty years in the date of his 
writings, and flourished about a century after the death of 
the apostle John. He speaks repeatedly of the Christian 
Scriptures as " the gospel and the apostles ;" and, like other 
writers of that early age, quotes them "without so much as 
a suspicion of placing any other in the same rank with 
them."f Clement of Alexandria (A. D. 194), contemporary 
with Tertullian, designates the writings of the evangelists 
" the Gospels ;" and, in quoting the New Testament, he names 
the apostolic epistles and " the scriptures" — " the divine scrip- 
tures "% &c. 

In the works of Irenaeus " there are numerous and long 
quotations of most of the books of the New Testament as 
sacred and divine scripture.'^ Like others of the Fathers, he 
declares that the scriptures " are open and clear, and may 
be read by all ;" that they were read and studied at that early 
period, and universally recognised and acknowledged by 
Christians as the oracles of Divine truth, his writings, and 
those of Clement and of Tertullian, as well as those of 
others in various places and of still earlier date, abundantly 
show. See Table. 

* See Lardner's Cred., vol. ii., p. 306-468. Paley, chap, ix., $ 1, 13. 
t Lardner, vol. ii., p. 305. t Ibid., p. 245, 246. § Ibid. 



192 



OP THE GENUINENESS 



Quotations from New Testament in Tertullian,* Clement of 
Alexandria, and Irenoeus. 

Clemens 
Tertulliaii, Alexandrinus, Irenaeus, 
A. D. 200. A. D. 194. A. D. 178. 



Matthew . 






290 


105 


195 


Mark . 






25 


9 


16 


Luke . 






420 


23 


127 


John . 






175 


36 


75 


Acts . 






68 


8 


57 


Romans 






120 


37 


66 


1 Corinthians 






219 


59 


67 


2 Corinthians 






68 


14 


14 


Galatians . 






67 


14 


22 


Ephesians . 






64 


15 


27 


Philippians . 






31 


11 


10 


Colossians . 






24 


8 


10 


1 Thessalonians 






24 


4 


2 


2 Thessalonians 






18 


1 


8 


1 Timothy . 






33 


11 


5 


2 Timothy . 






18 


5 


5 


Titus 






5 


2 


2 


Hebrews 






12 


11 


9 


James 






2 





3 


1 Peter 






12 


8 


5 


1 John 






39 


6 


6 


2 John 












3 


3 John 






2 








Revelation . 






66 


2 


33 



1802f 



389 



767 



The evidence of the genuineness of the New Testament 
thus becomes the more direct and decisive as we reach the 
borders of the apostolic age. In those days of fiery perse- 
cution, while Christians had ever to be ready to testify unto 
the death, there are not wanting written records to bear wit- 
ness concerning the faith and the gospel of Jesus, till we be 
led step by step to the period of the first preaching of the 
gospel to all nations. Irenaeus, who in his youth was the 
disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of the apostle John, 
preceded Clement about sixteen years, as Clement was prior 
to Tertullian by a still shorter period ; so that their several 
testimonies, though borne in different places, may be said to 
be continuous, so as to keep each link connected to the last. 

The slight allusions to the writings of the primitive Chris- 

* Tert. edit. Paris, 1608. Clement, Lut. Paris, 1631. 

+ Many of these passages are repeated in his works more or less fully ; 
and his citations, if the repetitions were included, would exceed 3000. The 
extant works of many of the fathers give ample proof of their familiar ac- 
quaintance with the works of ancient philosophers, historians, and poets, 
&c. Tertullian quotes about 200 profane authors, besides Christian wri- 
ters and heretics ; Clement quotes the works of more than 250 heathen 
writers. 



OF THE NEW TEStAMENT SCRIPTUttES. 193 

tian authors, and even the numerical exhibition of their quo- 
tations from the books of the New Testament, exclusive of 
numberless scriptural facts and expressions, can convey but 
an inadequate idea of the fulness and the strength of their 
testimony. 

A single passage adduced by Lardner may be quoted, in 
which Tertullian thus emphatically speaks of the apostolical 
epistles, and of the testimony then borne to their authenticity 
and genuineness. " Well, it you be willing to exercise your 
curiosity profitably in the business of your salvation, visit 
the apostolical churches, in which the very chairs of the 
apostles still preside in their own places ; in which their very 
authentic letters are recited, sounding forth the voice, and rep- 
resenting the countenance of each one of thern. Is Achaia 
near you] You have Corinth. If you are not far from 
Macedonia, you have Philippi, you have Thessalonica. If 
you can go to Asia, you have Ephesus. But if you are near 
to Italy, you have Rome, from whence we also may be easily 
satisfied."* There are existing manuscripts of the New 
Testament which are undoubtedly far older than the original 
writings then were, and it is not to be wondered at that these 
should have been preserved for more than a century and a 
half. Copies of them were doubtless to be seen in every 
other church, as quoted by every Christian writer, and trans- 
lated into Latin before the days of Tertullian, and "vulgarly 
used." But to see the very chairs of the apostles standing 
in their own places, and to hear their very authentic letters 
recited, it was needful, but only needful, to visit at that time 
the apostolical churches to which they were addressed. 

The testimony of Irenaeus is of so high antiquity that it 
demands a specific illustration. He shows throughout his 
works an intimate knowledge of the Gospels, the Acts, and 
the Epistles ; and he quotes the books of the New Testament 
as the Divine Scriptures, the Divine oracles, the Scriptures 
of the Lord. In a passage contained in the old Latin version, 
and partly cited in Greek by Eusebius, he bears the most ex- 
plicit testimony concerning the gospels. " We have not re- 
ceived," says he, " the knowledge of the way of our salva- 
tion by any others than those by whom the gospel has been 
brought to us. Which gospel they first preached, and after- 
ward, by the will of God, committed to writing, that it might 
be for time to come the foundation and pillar of our faith. 

* "Age jam qui volis curiositatem melius exercere in negotio salutis tuae, 
percurre Ecclesias Apostolicas apud quas ipsae adhuc cathedrae Apostolo- 
rum suis locis presidentur, apud quas ipsae authenticae literae eorum reci- 
tantur, sonantesvocem, et representantes facem uniuscujusque. Proxime 
est tibi Achaia? habes Corinthum. Si non longe es a Macedonia, habes 
Philippas, habes Thessalonicenas. Si potes in Asiam tendere, habes Ephe- 
sum : si autem Italiae adjacis, habes Romam, unde nobis quoque auctoritas 
praesto est." — Tert. Adv. Herat., c. 36, p. 338. 

R 



194 OF THE GENUINENESS 

For after that oilr Lord arose from the (lend, and they (the 
apostles) were endowed from above with the power of the 
Holy Ghost coming down upon them, they received a per- 
feet knowledge of all things. They then went forth to all 
the ends of the earth, declaring to men the blessing of heav- 
enly peace, having all of them, and every one, alike the gos- 
pel of God. Matthew, then among the Jews, wrote a gos- 
pel in their own language, while Peter and Paul were preach- 
ing the gospel at Home, and founding a church there; and 
after their exit, Mark, also the disciple and interpreter of 
Peter, delivered to us in writing the things that had been 
preaehed by Peter ; and Luke, the companion of Paul, put 
down in a book the gospel preaehed by him (Paul). After- 
ward John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned upon 
his breast, likewise published a gospel while he dwelt at Kphe- 
sus in Asia. 11 * Woro any modern divine to write a book on 
the genuineness of the gospels, he could not assert it more 
expressly, or state their original more distinctly, than Irenae- 
us did within the space of about a century after the last of 
them was published. 

" The correspondence, in the days of Ircmeus, of the oral 
and written tradition, and the deduction of the oral tradition 
through various channels from the age of the apostles, which 
was then lately passed, and, by consequence, the probability 
that the books truly delivered what the apostles taught, is 
inferred also with strict regularity from another passage of 
his works. "The tradition of the apostles,' this father saith, 
4 hath spread itself over the whole universe; and all they 
avIio search after the sources of truth will find this tradition 
to be held sacred in every church. We might enumerate all 
those who have been appointed bishops to these churches by 
the apostles, and all their successors up to our days. It is 
by this uninterrupted succession that we have received the 
tradition which actually exists in the church, as also the doc- 
trines of truth, as it was preached by the apostles. 1 ! The 
reader will observe upon this, that the same Iremeus who is 
now stating the strength and uniformity of the tradition, we 
have before seen recognising in the fullest manner the au- 
thority of the written record; from which we are entitled to 
conclude that they were then conformable to each other. 11 ;]; 

tremens may have exercised his fancy in attempting to 
sliow that there could be neither more nor fewer gospels than 
four; yet it is the more apparent that such a subject could 
never have formed matter of discussion, and that such a 
thought could never have entered his mind, except solely on 
the acknowledged and indisputable certainty of the fact, that 
there were four gospels, and four only. " He mentions how 

* Lardner, vol. ii., p. 1G9, 170. Paley. 

f Irenauus in Her., lib. hi., c. 3. % Paley's Evict, ix., $ 1. 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 195 

Matthew begins bis gospel, how Mark begins and ends his, 
and their supposed reasons for so doing. He enumerates 

at length the several passages of Christ's history in Luke 

Which are not found in any of tin; other evangelists. He 
states the particular design with Which St. .John eomposed 
his gospel, and accounts for the doctrinal declarations which 

preeede the narrative. To the Book of the Aets of the Apos- 
tles, its author, and credit, the testimony of Irena:us is no 
less explicit. 1 '* He who referred to the uniformity and uni- 
versality of the traditions held sacred throughout the church- 
es, speaks of the author of the Acts of the Apostles as hav- 
ing related the truth with the greatest exactness. And he 
actually collected the; several texts, in which the writer of 

the history is represented as accompanying Paul, which Leads 

him to deliver a summary of almost the whole of the last 
twelve chapters of the book. And in an author thus abound- 
ing with references and allusions to Scriptures, there; is not 
one to any apocryphal writings whatever. " This," as 1'aley 
observes. " is a broad line of distinction between our sacred 
books and all others."f 

While Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, in Syria, who was 
contemporary with Irenaeus, calls the gospel of Matthew " the 
Evangelic Voice;" Irenaeus, who presided over the Chris- 
tian Church at Lyons, in France, designates the Scriptures 
in the same terms as those which, nearly at the same time;, 
were appropriated to them by Clement of Alexandria, in Egypt, 
and Tertulliau of Carthage : " Divine; Scriptures," " Divine 
Oracles," u Scriptures of the Lord," " Evangelic and Apos- 
tolic writings." And thus, at that early age, the same tes- 
timony is borne concerning them in Asia, Europe, and Af- 
rica. 

At that period, while the traditions concerning the facts 
were so direct, recent, and universal, the circumstances con- 
nected with the life, the death, and the credited resurrection 
of Jesus, and also with the preaching, the labours, and the 
perils of the apostles of Jesus and first propagators of the 

gospel, must, from the vcA-y nature of th[e case, have been 
subjects of intense interest and diligent inquiry on the part 
of all who jeoparded their lives every hour for the name of 
Christian, and who were ever ready to stake their earthly 
existence rather than barter for the breath of life the hope 
of immortality through the faith of Jesus. That man is lit- 
tle versant even in the forms of spiritual things, and prizes 
but slightly the means of their attainment, who, though ad- 
vanced in years, cannot "enumerate" the names of the preach- 
ers under whose ministry be has regularly and successively 
sat, and who cannot tell something more concerning them 

* Paley's £vid., he., $ J. f Ibid. Lardnor, vol. li., 165-19^. 



196 OP THE GENUINENESS 

than their names. Weak indeed, even in ordinary life, is 
that curiosity which never stretches back a little space to in- 
vestigate any eventful transactions of a preceding age ; and 
which cares not to question the grayheaded fathers of a pas- 
sing or of a past generation, of what they had seen in their 
early years, or of the great things that may have happened 
in their time. It is not uncommon to find in any register of 
mortality, or even in the brief obituary which a newspaper 
supplies, some allusion to the events that were coeval with 
the early days of those who have died at an extreme old age. 
And it is not to be credited, to adopt an illustration some- 
what in point, that the remembrance of the sayings and suf- 
ferings of those who suffered at the stake for conscience' 
sake in Scotland, or during the days of " the bloody Mary" 
in England, died away before the then existing generation 
was entombed, or that their memory perished even with 
their children's children. Whether relating to things civil or 
sacred, tradition preserves for a time every memorable trans- 
action ; and hence that epithet is often applied to events 
which have any tendency to affect the interests of futurity, 
or which were accounted of moment in their acted time. 
When such traditions are uniform, and the facts both recent 
and influential, the testimony is deemed conclusive, and it 
affords one of the most general as well as most natural means 
whereby the inquisitiveness of the human mind is excited 
and developed ; and it may be said that history, in general, 
has from hence had its origin, rather than from records borne 
by eyewitnesses of the facts. The various application of 
this principle at the present day may be illustrated in some 
degree by the seemingly incongruous reference to the re- 
bellion in Scotland in 1745, and the origin of Wesleyanism 
in England. It is not likely that any, in the one case, who 
had seen "the prince," or any, in the other, who had con- 
versed with Wesley, would either fail or need to be remind- 
ed of it to their dying day. No Jacobite, and surely not a 
native in the former country, nor any Methodist, we speak 
it respectfully, in the latter, would fail to be inquisitive, in 
either case, wherever any fact could be elucidated, or any 
minute information be supplied, by evidence the most direct 
and satisfactory. And is it conceivable that such feelings 
were dormant and dead, and such a principle at rest among 
those who so firmly believed in Jesus, that they suffered the 
loss of all things for his name's sake, who were willing to 
show their steadfastness unto death, and who, in every coun- 
try under heaven, might have heard from the lips of their 
forefathers what their ears had heard from the lips of apos- 
tles, and who could look at them pointing to the places which 
they had trod, or to the spots where they had preached, or 
where they died. But while universal tradition was appealed 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 197 

to in a manner that no effrontery could have risked, if not 
fully borne out by the fact, written testimony is conjoined 
with oral, even prior to the time when they have so strikingly 
and conclusively met. And the man whose mind has been 
wrought up to that high and extravagant skepticism, which 
may prompt him to think that the remembrance of a hoary- 
headed and exiled apostle, or of a martyred minister, could 
speedily have been obliterated from the minds of those who 
had been instructed by them in the faith, for which they, too, 
were ready and willing to die, may pass over, as unworthy 
of his notice or unsuited to his taste, the following testimony 
of Irenaeus, concerning the things which Polycarp had told 
him of the man who had leaned on the bosom of Jesus. Yet 
some, guided by wisdom of another order, may rightly hold 
it as highly appreciable, by reason as by sensibility, while 
they deem it irrational to put off the feelings of humanity, 
and to forget the common law of our nature by withholding 
their confidence from such clear, harmonious, full, and touch- 
ing testimony, in homage to those who, maddened, perhaps, 
by the witness which they bear, rail at those fathers of the 
church who, from the holiness of their lives, as testified by 
their enemies, have a right to disown all such mockers as 
their children. 

" I can tell the place," saith Irenaeus, " in which the bless- 
ed Polycarp sat and taught, and his going out and coming 
in, and the manner of his life, and the form of his person, and 
the discourses he made to the people, and how he related 
his conversation with John, and others who had seen the 
Lord, and how he related their sayings, and what he had heard 
concerning the Lord, both concerning his miracles and his 
doctrine as he had received them from the eyewitnesses of 
the word of life ; all which Polycarp relates agreeable to the 
scriptures."* 

"Not many wise men after the flesh," saith the scripture, 
"not many mighty, not many noble," were called. And con- 
sistent with this declaration, and with the known persecu- 
tions which Christians endured in the earliest ages, and the 
contempt in which their very name was held, we are not to 
look for many writers while the traditions were yet vivid 
and complete in every church ; nor are we taught to look for 
profound reasoning or the most logical deductions from all 
of those who then left their testimony in writing to future 
ages. And although there are not many, there are some, and 
a sufficient number, to carry on the testimony to its comple- 
tion, and to unite the narratives of uninspired men as closely 
to the writings of the evangelists and apostles, as those of 
more recent writings join in contemporaneously and succes- 
sively with one another. 

* Palcy's Evid., chap ix., $ 1. I Cor., i. 26. 
R 2 



198 OF THE GENUINENESS 

The writings of Irenaeus, however explicit in regard to the 
uniformity and universality of the traditions and genuineness 
of the scriptures, stand not alone even at that early date. 
And, if possible, stronger evidence of the antiquity of the 
sacred writings, and of the authority attached exclusively to 
the gospels, as the scriptural records of the life of Christ, 
than any general references or express quotations could sup- 
ply, is afforded by the fact that a harmony or collation of the 
gospels (such as continue to be published to the present day) 
was composed by Tatian, a disciple of Justin Martyr, the 
name of which alone, viz., Diatessaron, or the four, plainly in- 
timates their known and acknowledged number in the ear- 
liest as well as the latest ages. 

The same Christian charity and love of the brotherhood 
which, as their enemies bear witness, was associated with 
the name, as peculiarly exemplified by their mutual sympa- 
thy and affection, not only bound together the members of 
each church, even as if literally " members one of another," 
but, in a more general sense, was extended towards the 
whole body of believers, and was not, like the boasted love 
of their country among the Romans, limited to any land, or 
restricted to that reputed witchcraft-power which could not 
pass a stream. We have already learned from Tacitus and 
Pliny that Christians were subjected to persecutions, alike 
at the centre of the empire and a distant province. And such 
was the intercourse and harmony that prevailed among those 
whom seas could not divide in affection, nor any Rubicon 
separate as aliens, that churches, as well as individuals, could 
express their sympathy or relate their sufferings, and bear a 
common testimony as possessing a common faith. The 
churches of Lyons and Vienne in France, before Irenaeus 
was their pastor, sent a narrative of the sufferings of their 
martyrs to the churches of Asia and Phrygia, which has been 
preserved entire by Eusebius, and was written at the time 
when the personal recollection of their venerable bishop, 
Photinus, ninety years old, could reach back to the time of 
the death of the last apostles ; while, at the same time, the 
churches testified that these words which the Lord had spo- 
ken, and which that evangelist records, had in their experi- 
ence been fulfilled. " Then was fulfilled that which was spo- 
ken by the Lord, that whosoever killeth you will think he 
doth God service." Such was the identity of the faith in all 
the churches, and so familiar to believers was scriptural 
phraseology, that that epistle alone contains passages which, 
without expressly naming them, have a reference to no less 
than twelve books of the New Testament, several of the quo* 
tations being exactly conformable to the Greek original.* 

f Lardner, vol. ii., p. 160-ie5, 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 199 

Similar "concurring testimonies," either direct or implied, 
are supplied from every quarter and from every work, to the 
fact related, about the same period, by Hegesippus, a Chris- 
tian writer, in describing what he witnessed in his journey 
from Palestine to Rome, that " in every succession and in 
every city the same doctrine is taught which the law, and the 
prophets, and the Lord teacheth." And in the small frag- 
ments of his works preserved by Eusebius and Photius, 
" the style of the scriptures of the New Testament often ap- 
pears."* The epistles to Diognatus (supposed to be Justin's) 
contain in a few pages many passages from the epistles of 
the New Testament; and the first epistle to the Corinthians 
is thus quoted : t; The apostle says, knowledge puffeth up, but 
charity edifieth."t 

Justin, having successively adopted various systems of phi- 
losophy, became a convert (about the year of our era 132 or 
133) to the Christian faith, and the blood-bought title of Mar- 
tyr was added to his name. His undoubted works still ex- 
tant are two Apologies, the one presented to the Emperor 
Titus Antoninus, and the other to Marcus Antoninus, and a Di- 
alogue with a Jew. Neither in writing to an emperor nor in 
arguing with an Israelite could he assume the truth of the 
New Testament or quote it so freely as if addressing believ- 
ers. Nor, though more copious than those which preceded 
him, are his works nearly so voluminous as those of Origen, 
Clement, or Tertullian. Yet " from his works might be 
extracted almost a complete life of Christ" as written in 
the gospels. J His citations from the New Testament, as 
noted even in the index to his works, exceed ninety ; but as 
estimated by Jones, quoted by Paley, above two hundred. 
Pliny, in his letter to Trajan, relates that Christians convened 
for worship on a stated day ; and Justin, in his Apology ad- 
dressed to another emperor, records the nature of their ser- 
vice. No misrepresentation could have been given of a fact 
which was open to inspection in every part of the emperor's 
dominions, and of which every Christian of that time was in- 
dividually the weekly witness. The brief and artless de- 
scription is a practical illustration of the simplicity of the gos- 
pel-worship, of the recognised conformity of the writings of 
the Jewish prophets and Christian apostles, and of the uni- 
versal recognition, at that early period, of the scriptures of 
the Old and New Testament as the rule of faith. After re- 
ferring to the institution and observance of the sacrament of 
the supper, as commemorative of the death of Christ, and to 
the liberality, mutual sympathy, and piety of Christians, he 

* Lardner, vol. ii., p. 153, 155. t Ibid., p. 141. 

% Justin, in quoting a passage in the gospel of Matthew, states, in the 
preceding page, that the commentaries of the apostles were called gospels. 
Ed. Thirl, p. 96. 



200 OF THE GENUINENESS 

adds, " On Sunday, as it is called, all who dwell either in 
towns or in the country assemble together at the same place, 
and the commentaries or memoirs of the apostles* or the 
writings of the prophets are read, as the time allows ; and 
when the reader has ended, the president makes a discourse, 
exhorting to the imitation of so excellent things."! Besides 
the writings of the evangelists, passages are quoted in his 
works from the Acts of the Apostles, eight epistles of Paul, 
the second of Peter, and the book of the Revelation, which 
last he expressly ascribes to John the apostle of Christ. J 

The Christian authors who preceded Justin had personally 
seen and conversed with some of the apostles, and, having 
been eyewitnesses of their acts, carry up the testimony 
within the apostolic age. While the apostles themselves, 
with the evangelists Mark and Luke, connect the testimony 
with the days of Jesus, whose gospel they were the first to 
go out and preach unto the world, by immediate commission 
from their Master, whom we cannot name else than Divine. 

Formal treatises in defence of Christianity were not writ- 
ten at the time when visible miracles were its Divine creden- 
tials. And the genuineness of the New Testament writings 
stood not in need of vindication at the time when the salu- 
tation of an apostle with his own hand was the token or 
proof in every epistle, or when their original authentic wri- 
tings were to be seen ; and when, in transmitting them 
throughout Christendom — then wide-extended, though new — 
the testimony of the church to which they were addressed, 
and which retained the original scripture, was the voucher 
of each. The tardy admission of some of the epistles into 
the canon, and the exclusion of apocryphal works, are proofs 
of the authenticity and genuineness of " the Divine Scrip- 
tures," which were universally recognised, without question 
and without doubt. And that such was the fact even in the 
apostolic age, proof, where needed, is not wanting. 

We need not Christian testimony to show how speedily 
the faith of Jesus was spread throughout the world ; how 
severely his followers were persecuted for his name's sake ; 
and how readily they rather chose to be sacrificed for Christ 
than offer incense to an idol. Of these facts our enemies 
are witnesses. W^e have heard the words of heathen histo- 
rians ; we have looked into the edicts and letters of pagan 
emperors and rulers ; we have opened volumes teeming with 
proofs far more manifold than ever were given to the genu- 
ineness of any book which Greece or Rome ever produced ; 
we have glanced at the direct appeal as touching notorious 
facts, of a Christian apologist to a Roman emperor ; and the 
continuous testimony has been traced to the time when the 

* See preceding note. j Justin, ed. Thirl., p. 97. 

X Lardner, vol. ii., p. 132. 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 201 

religion of Jesus was new* And now, were there any, the 
most secret recesses of those who had part in the matter 
may be ransacked, and the confidential correspondent, so to 
speak, of the agents and actors in the scene, may be scruti- 
nized. But the letters which might here be produced, and 
which have been laid open for ages to the world, are those 
of men who lived and died unto Him who said, There is no- 
thing secret which shall not be revealed, nor hid that shall 
not be known. And a cursory glance at their epistles will 
show not only that the Christian scriptures existed, but that 
their genuineness and authenticity were held to be unques- 
tionable, and that their authority was unhesitatingly appeal- 
ed to among Christians almost as soon as they profess to 
have been written. 

Epistolary communications between individuals and church- 
es, resulting from their actual and relative condition, may in- 
cidentally and undesignedly disclose facts, and establish 
their certainty as conclusively as any direct testimony, and 
more free from even the pretence of a cavil. An epistle of 
Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, to the church at Philippi ; 
epistles of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, or one to each of the* 
churches at Ephesus, Magnesia, Trallis, Rome, Philadelphia, 
and Smyrna, and one to Polycarp ; a record of the martyr- 
dom of Polycarp ;* and another of that of Ignatius ; a work 
entitled the" Pastor, or Shepherd, ascribed to Hennas ; an 
epistle of Clement, bishop of Rome, to the Corinthians ; and 
an epistle ascribed to Barnabas, the authorship of which is 
questioned, but the antiquity of which, like that of the " Shep- 
herd," is undoubted ; form (exclusive of some spurious 
works) the still extant Christian writings of those who were 
the disciples or contemporaries of the apostles. Can any 
proof be deduced from these writings of the antiquity and 
genuineness of the scriptures of the New Testament ! 

Polycarp was a Christian minister at the time of Justin's 
birth, but their martyrdom was nearly simultaneous ; and 
their testimony is thus connected in time as in tendency, 
though respectively born at Smyrna and at Rome. But in- 
stead of a volume, a single short epistle is the only extant 
writing of the illustrious Polycarp,f who presided over the 
church of Smyrna before the close of the first century ; but 
it alone will suffice to show how his mind was imbued with 
the knowledge of the Christian scriptures. There is scarcely 
a line in the letter without a scriptural expression. The 
first two paragraphs contain at least eight quotations from 
the gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and three of the epis- 

* " The acts of the martyrdom of Polycarp," says Gibbon, " exhibit a 
lively picture of these tumults" (tumultuous clamours of the people 
against the Christians). — Hist., vol. ii., p. 422. 

f Cotelerii Patres Apostolici, vol. ii., p. 186-189. 



202 OF THE GENUINENESS 

ties ; and they conclude literally with these scriptural ex- 
hortations :* Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for rail- 
ing ,*f remembering those things which the Lord said, teach- 
ing ; judge not that ye he not judged ;% forgive, and ye shall be 
forgiven ;§ be ye merciful, that ye may obtain mercy ;\\ with 
what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.*ft And 
blessed are the poor, and they that are persecuted for righteous- 
ness' sake ; for theirs is the kingdom of God."** And who, in 
a Christian land, can be ignorant that these are the sayings 
of Christ, as recorded by the evangelists ? Or what stronger 
proof could be given of the antiquity, genuineness, and ac- 
knowledged authenticity of the scriptures, in the earliest 
ages of the church, than the unreserved manner in which 
they are quoted by the apostolic fathers, who called upon 
those whom they addressed to remember what the Lord said, 
and to give heed to the things that are written in scripture, 
as explicitly and as authoritatively as any preacher could 
now enforce upon a Christian audience the remembrance 
and observance of the words of the Lord, or appeal to the 
Holy Scriptures as the known, acknowledged, and undoubt- 
ed rule of faith and of practice. 

Did Polycarp speak of writings unknown to himself or to 
the Philippians, when, after bewailing the falling away of 
Valens, who was once a presbyter among them, he express- 
ed his confidence in their steadfastness : " But I am confi- 
dent that ye are well exercised in the Holy Scriptures, and 
that nothing is hidden from you 1- Or was he ignorant that 
the epistle to the Ephesians formed part of these sacred wri- 
tings, when, in the grief which he felt for the lapse of one 
who had been a brother in the faith and fellow-preacher of 
the gospel, he added, in the next words, ; ' but it is not now 
given unto me, as it is said in these scriptures, Be ye angry 
and sin not, and let not the sun go down upon your wrath, "ft 

* Cot. Patr. Apostol., vol. ii., p. 185. Polycarpi et Ignatii epist,, p. 15, 
ed. Usser. 

t Mr) arcodidovrec nanov avri Mr] airodidovTEC nanov avn 

tca/cov, 7] Tioidopiav avn hoidopiac. Kaitov, r\ Xoidopcav avn loidopiat;, 

1 Peter iii., 9. 
t Mr] Kpcvere Iva fir] Kpidrjre. Mr] Kptvere iva p,r) KpidrjTS. 

Matt, vii., 1 ; Luke vi., 37. 
$ Matt, vi., 14. Luke vi., 37. 
II Matt, v., 7. 

% ~E,v g) fiETpc) fierprjTB avrifie- Ev <Z) /uETpG) juerpeire avrtjue- 
TpT]dr]GeraL vfiiv. rprjOrjaeTai vjulv. Matt, vii., 2. 

Luke vi., 38. 

** MaKaptoi ol tttoxoi, k<u oi Ma/capioi ol tztux 01 (Luke vi., 

ScoKOfievoi evEftev duiatoovvrjc on 20), ol dEdcoyfiEvoc evekev ducato- 

avruv eotlv 7] ftaaikEia tov Oeov cvvrjc, on avrov ectlv t) (3acn?i£La 

(Of God). tg)v ovpavcjv (of heaven). Matt. 

v., 3, 10. 
ft Epist., p. 22, 23. Eph. iv., 26. 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 203 

Did he doubt the genuineness of another epistle, or did he 
appeal to a writing unknown to the Philippians, when ex- 
horting them to abstain from covetousness and from all 
evil, and to take warning from the case which he bewailed, 
he asked, " Who of you are ignorant of the judgment of 
God 1 Do we not know that the saints shall judge the world, as 
Paul teaches V And after repeating this question in the 
words of the apostle (1 Cor. vi., 2), and thus appealing to 
his authority, he states, in a like incidental manner, that he 
had seen or heard nothing such among them, among whom 
the blessed Paul had laboured, who spoke of them in the be- 
ginning of his epistle, and who gloried of them in all the 
churches. And therefore did he sorrow greatly for Valens 
and for his wife. Thus, as if unwittingly, do Polycarp and 
the other apostolic fathers testify of scriptural facts, as 
truths which, instead of needing -any affirmation to confirm 
or argument to prove them, are themselves founded on as 
the very basis of exhortations to those who had personally 
witnessed or experienced their reality. 

No testimony could seemingly be stronger or more direct 
than that the original writings were in the days of Tertullian 
to be seen throughout the churches ; that the inspection of 
them, in the hands of the church to which each was commit- 
ted, was the proffered proof to all men of their existence and 
of their genuineness ; and that, at a still earlier period, they 
were everywhere openly read on the Sabbath in every 
Christian congregation. But having existing documents to 
show that the Holy Scriptures were unhesitatingly quoted 
as such by those who lived in the days of the apostles, even 
as they are now read, word for w T ord, in our own; and that 
express epistles were at that early age referred to in ad- 
dressing those to whom these very epi-stles were written, 
may we not demand of our enemies what more they could 
ask, or what clearer or closer testimony could be given ! 

It was only as solicited by the Philippans themselves, as 
he relates, that Polycarp wrote concerning righteousness to 
a church of which " the blessed and honoured Paul, with 
whom he nor any other was to be compared, had been per- 
sonally the instructer in the word of truth ; and to which, 
when absent, he had written an epistle (or epistles), into 
which, if they looked, they would be built up in the faith 
which had been delivered unto them." Ignatius, in like man- 
ner, may be said to bring a whole church as witnesses to the 
genuineness of the epistle to the Ephesians, whom he address- 
es as the companions, in the mysteries of the gospel, of Paul 
the sanctified, the martyr deservedly most happy, "who 
through all his epistle makes mention of you in Christ Je- 
sus/'* In commending the church of Ephesus, Ignatius thus 

* Lardner, vol ii ff p. 78. 



204 OF THE GENUINENESS 

plainly alludes to the epistle of Paul to themselves, " in which 
they are commended and never reproved." And though the 
Christians at Corinth were early separated into divisions, 
they may be said to be brought to bear witness as one man, 
that an epistle in which they are censured was written to 
them by the same apostle. Clement, who was himself a la- 
bourer in the work of faith in the days of the apostles, and 
who was afterward bishop of Rome, in writing to the Co- 
rinthians, claims no right of interpreting the word of God, 
but, unlike to many of his nominal successors, urges them 
to look diligently to the Scriptures, which are the true oracles 
of the Holy Spirit* And condemning their unchristian con- 
tentions, he quotes text after text from the Old Testament 
and from the New, and thus admonishes them : " Remember 
the words of the Lord Jesus, who said, Wo to that man (by 
whom offences come) ; it were better for him that a millstone 
were tied about his neck, and that he should be drowned in 
the sea, than that he should offend one of my little ones. 
Take into your hands the epistle of the blessed Paul the 
apostle, what did he at the first write to you at the beginning 
of the gospel 1 Verily he did by the Spirit admonish you 
concerning himself, and Cephas (Peter) and Apollos, be- 
cause that even then there were factions or divisions among 
you."t The same date is assigned to the unquestionably 
genuine epistle of Clement — containing this direct appeal to 
Paul's epistle to themselves as a testimony against them — 
as to the Book of Revelation. 

Of the manner in which the scriptures were appealed to, 
we have thus evident illustrations. And if farther proof be 
required of the authority more than human which was at- 
tached to them from the beginning, it may be supplied by re- 
ferring to the practice of Ignatius and to a declaration of Po- 
lycarp. The former holds the authority of the gospel as 
equivalent to that of Christ, were he visibly manifest in the 
flesh. " Fleeing to the gospel as to the flesh of Jesus, and 
to the apostles as the presbytery of the church, let us also 
love the prophets because that they also spoke of the gos- 
pel, and hoped in him (Christ), and expected him. "J And 
Polycarp, quoting the first epistle of John, affirms, that who- 
ever does not confess that Christ is come in the flesh, is an- 
tichrist ; and he adds that whosoever does not confess the 
martyrdom of the cross is of the devil, and whoever perverts 
the words or oracles of the Lord to his own lusts is the first- 
born of Satan. § 

In the age in which they were written, or in that which 
immediately succeeded it, as hi those that follow, the scrip- 

* Clement, epist., p. 53. Oxon. 1653. 
t Ibid., p. 61. Lardner, vol. ii., p. 36. 
| Lardner, ibid., p. 89. § Epist., p. 20. 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 205 

tures were often quoted, and their words and expressions, as 
well as sentiments, were interwoven with every topic on 
which Christians wrote. And brief as are their writings, Lard- 
ner adduces above two hundred passages from the works of 
the apostolic fathers, some of which are express citations 
from scripture, others are unquestionably quotations, though 
not stated as such, and others form verbal coincidences and 
allusions, which denote their scriptural origin. 

The language of scripture, now universally knowm and rec- 
ognised as such throughout Protestant Christendom, was at 
first as new and unknown in all Grecian and Roman litera- 
ture, as the events which it details were inconceivable by 
heathen mythologists, till the gospel of Jesus was preached 
unto the world. A new faith in the heart put new words in 
the mouth, such as human lips had not previously uttered. 
And four memoirs of Jesus Christ, a single narrative of the 
acts of those whom he commissioned to preach his doctrine, 
and a few epistles written by some of them to those who 
believed it, supplied materials to thousands of writers, with- 
out any intermission, in after ages ; for any semblance of 
which (the Septuagint excepted) the Alexandrian library, 
with its thousands of volumes, would have been ransacked 
in vain. And in the writings of the primitive fathers we 
clearly see the opening and first working of an inexhaustible 
mine of unsearchable riches, unlike to all the earthly ores, in 
which no Divine treasure can be found. Scriptural facts are 
of a different order from all others that have ever been trans- 
acted on the theatre of the world. And Christian writers, 
partaking of a new name, professed a new religion, and com- 
municated with each other concerning things with which 
they were familiar, but which had never entered into the 
heart of a blinded pagan to conceive. No longer bent on 
fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, believers 
in Jesus handled the pen as none had ever handled it before 
but the prophets of Israel, when they indited the things 
touching the Messiah ; and, compared even with these, they 
were not as men who look for the morning, but as those in 
whose view a world is spread forth after the rising of the 
sun. There is an obvious and essential dissimilarity between 
the writings of the Christian fathers and all that had ever 
previously been written by uninspired mortals. New prin- 
ciples w r ere founded on new facts : and the belief of the lat- 
ter and consequent adoption of the former, as they are re- 
corded and enjoined in the Christian scriptures, introduced a 
new mode of thinking, feeling, and acting, and, consequently, 
of writing. In those days, Christians in name were not 
heathens either in word or in deed. And the extant writings 
of some of the earliest martyrs abound with tokens and tes- 
timonials of the faith which was first delivered to the saints 

S 



206 OF THE GENUINENESS 

and recorded in the scriptures. A rich vein of scriptural 
language, as drawn from the New Testament, runs through 
all they wrote. For not only the events of which they speak, 
and the motives which they urge, but quotations which they 
avowedly cite, and the peculiar scriptural phraseology which 
they adopt, show that they were as familiar with the Chris- 
tian oracles as they were faithful to their Christian princi- 
ples. These striking and characteristic peculiarities, con- 
tradistinguishing their works from those of preceding writers, 
plainly point to the pattern from which they drew, and show 
that the doctrine of the gospel, whether preached or written, 
was from the beginning one and the same. Genuine coin, 
though ultimately passing through a thousand hands, must 
first come from the mint, where the image was impressed 
which designates its origin and constitutes its genuineness : 
and, being ever after recognised at a glance, the question is 
not asked, as a doubt does not exist, what it is, or from 
whence it came. And from Christian writings, nearly simul- 
taneous with those of the New Testament, we may see that 
not only the truths, but the very words and expressions of 
scripture, passed, so to speak, as the current and unquestion- 
ed coin, newly stamped by the hands of the apostles, of that 
kingdom which is not of this world. Wherever a spurious 
writing appeared, it was detected as counterfeit. And all 
such were as uniformly rejected by the fathers, as the New 
Testament writings were appealed to as genuine, authentic, 
and Divine. The base metal of the world was clearly and 
carefully discriminated from the pure gold of the sanctuary. 
And the writings of the evangelists and apostles, as a treas- 
ury of unsearchable riches ever ready for use and at hand 
to all, formed from the beginning the common property and 
patrimony of the Christian churches, which, in the lifetime 
of the apostles, were spread throughout the world. 

The testimony borne to the genuineness of the New Tes- 
tament Scriptures is not only derived from the acknowledg- 
ment of those (as will be afterward seen) who strove to ex- 
tirpate the Christian faith, and of those who in some respects 
endeavoured to pervert it, and from the uniform, numerous, 
and consecutive appeals of many Christian writers from the 
days of the apostles down to the period when the gospel of 
Jesus became the religion of the empire ; but the same un- 
varying testimony was heard from every quarter, as well as 
maintained in every age. Witnesses everywhere arose 
w T hose writings confirm the same truth to all succeeding gen- 
erations. And we may still read quotations from the New 
Testament in the numerous writings of learned Christians, 
who, in the earliest ages of the church, professed the same 
faith, and appealed to the same authority in the different re- 
gions of the world ; throughout Asia, at Jerusalem, and at 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 207 

Antioch in Syria, at Smyrna, Ephesus, Sardis, Pontus in 
Asia Minor, and at Hierapolis in Phrygia ; at a wide distance 
on the coast of Africa, in the cities of Alexandria and Car- 
thage ; and throughout Europe, in Crete, Greece, Italy, and 
France. And contemporary writers, in cities far remote from 
each other, drew their stores of theological knowledge as 
freely and copiously from the Hoi}' Scriptures, and paid as 
unreserved submission to their authority as modern theolo- 
gians, who hold to the purity and simplicity of the faith, could 
now do in London, Berlin, Geneva, Amsterdam, or New-York, 
whether inculcating the doctrines and precepts of the gospel 
from the pulpit, or committing their writings to the press. 
Then, as now, it might be that, even in a volume, no express 
quotation or extract from one or two short epistles should 
be found. But the scriptures, as unfolding the will of God 
and the system of salvation by Jesus Christ, were read in the 
churches, were revered by believers, and furnished the theme 
of every sermon, and supplied matter for every treatise, in 
unfolding, confirming, and enforcing the faith as it was and 
still is in Jesus, the same unaltered and unalterable word. 

If, then, we look to " the cloud of witnesses" gathered to- 
gether from every quarter, what other book, may we not ask, 
has such abundant proof of its genuineness as the Christian 
scriptures ! The books of the ~Se\v Testament may surely 
be acknowledged as the writings of their reputed authors, 
with as confident an assurance as is unhesitatingly given to 
the writings of Herodotus, Xenophon, and Livy. It may be 
confidently affirmed, that all extant ancient works, which were 
written for several centuries after these eminent writers lived, 
do not contain so full and numerous quotations from their 
writings, or those of any other profane author, as those of 
the New Testament in the existing works of Clemens Alex- 
andrinus, Tertullian, and Origen alone. The number of an- 
cient manuscripts of the New 7 Testament in like manner 
overbalanced those of classic authors. " About fifteen man- 
uscripts of the history of Herodotus are known to critics. 
This amount of copies may be taken as an average number 
of ancient manuscripts of the classic authors ; some few have 
many more ; but many have fewer. To mention any num- 
ber as that of the existing ancient manuscripts, either of the 
Hebrew or Greek scriptures, would be impossible. It is 
enough to say that, on the revival of learning, copies of the 
scriptures were found wherever any books had been pre- 
served. The number of ancient manuscripts of the Greek 
New Testament, or parts of it, hitherto examined by editors, 
is nearly five hundred. If, in the case of a classic author, 
twenty manuscripts, or even five, are deemed amply suffi- 
cient (and sometimes one is relied on), it is evident that many 



208 OF THE GENUINENESS 

hundreds are quite redundant for the purposes of argument."* 
" The wide circulation of the scriptures secured them not 
merely from extinction, but from corruption. These books 
were never included within the sphere of any one centre of 
power, civil or ecclesiastical. They were secreted, and they 
were expanded beyond the utmost reach of tyranny or fraud."f 
In every view it may be affirmed, for with such palpable ev- 
idence no farther proof is needed to show, that the history of 
Christ and the doctrines which are recorded in the New Tes- 
tament have come dowm from the apostolic age to the pres- 
ent hour as the genuine writings of the evangelists and apos- 
tles ; and that they were received as the code of faith and 
rule of life by all who named the name of Jesus. 

But, in the first centuries of our era, anti-Christian as well 
as Christian writers commented, though in an opposite spirit, 
on the New Testament Scriptures ; and their direct and ex- 
plicit appeals to them, as the undoubted writings held sacred 
by Christians and written by the disciples of Jesus, might 
here close the demonstration of their genuineness, were not 
the statements and reasonings of these adversaries reserved 
for showing at once that the scriptures are genuine, and that 
Jesus is the Christ. 

May it hot now be asked whether the writers of the New 
Testament have not a right to be heard as the witnesses of 
Jesus ] And is it for those who believe that God spake by 
the prophets, and that his word must needs be fulfilled, to 
demur to their testimony in proof of facts which may pos- 
sibly be nothing else than its accomplishment] And might 
not the comparison, without farther preamble, be instituted 
between what prophets foretold and apostles wrote ; and 
might not, then, the arbitrament of the question touching the 
Messiahship of Jesus be left to those who assuredly spake 
by inspiration of God 1 But, skeptics having taken to them- 
selves the name of rationalists, it. may be meet still farther 
to reason together before identifying, by a parallel as com- 
plete as that with which our inquiry began, the testimony of those 
who saw the days of the Messiah afar off, and that of those 
eyewitnesses of the life and earwitnesses of the words of 
Jesus, by whose lips the doctrine of the cross was first 
preached, and from whose hands it is clear that the scrip- 
tures came, in which the Christian religion is unfolded and 
proffered to the world. 

It is manifest from the very nature of the case, as well as 
from many facts previously adduced, that the Christian tes- 
timony was universally borne to the authenticity of scrip- 
ture as well as to its genuineness, or that the events re- 

* Taylor's History of the Transmission of Ancient Books to Modem 
Times, p. 200-202. f Ibid., 204, 205. 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 209 

corded in the New Testament, and the doctrines which it 
hence unfolds, were held to be as undoubted as that it was 
written by the evangelists and disciples of Christ. 

The Christian testimony has been very fully investigated 
by the scrupulous and laborious Lardner, and illustrated by 
the acute and philosophic Paley, and elucidated and adorned 
by the eloquence of Chalmers. It is necessarily a common 
theme with Christian writers on the evidences of our faith, 
and has been evaded by many, but never manfully met by 
any of the adversaries of the gospel. It has been the wri- 
ter's object to set it in that which he deems its proper place, 
and to show at a glance, however imperfectly, its abundance 
and value, and its uninterrupted continuity to the days of the 
apostles. 

How t very incomplete such a summary must be, the reader 
may judge from the fact that eight octavo volumes, contain- 
ing more than four thousand pages, are devoted by Dr. Lard- 
ner to the illustration of t; the credibility of the gospel his- 
tory, or the principal facts of the New Testament as con- 
firmed by passages of ancient authors who were contempo- 
rary with our Saviour, or his apostles, or lived near their time."' 
Besides others of minor note, forty Christian writers flour- 
ished before the close of the second century, a like number 
in the third, and a greater in the fourth. Testimonies are 
also adduced from sixty ancient heathens. And Jews and 
heretics are also numbered among our witnesses. 

Bat not only is the Christian testimony traceable without 
intermission to the apostolic age, and confirmed by a cloud 
of witnesses, it is also supported by proofs peculiar to itself, 
and common to no historical evidence besides, and lays claim 
to a higher credibility than .the most zealous defender of the 
truth of any other events recorded in the whole history of 
man could venture to allege in their verification. For it was 
sealed by the blood of martyrs, as well as guarantied by the 
voice of prophets. To the first of these a moment's atten- 
tion may be here claimed. 

No historian is ever called on to depone to the truth of the 
facts which he records, or to give more than a verbal affir- 
mation, or, when attainable, to produce documentary evi- 
dence, itself merely a written word, to which the hand of 
the writer is the only witness. Hitherto we have looked 
only in this light at the testimony of Christians. But, our 
enemies being judges, the testimony of Jesus — as witness 
was borne concerning him and his gospel — instead of resting 
exclusively on any Christian records, however numerous and 
clear, was maintained even to the death by multitudes of 
both sexes and of all ages in the city of Rome, and, at least, 
in one extensive province of the empire, within the lifetime 
of some of the apostles, and in the immediately succeeding 

S 2 



210 OF THE GENUINENESS 

generations. At that period, as well as both previously and 
subsequently, martyrdom was no uncommon fate of the be- 
lievers in a crucified Saviour. And as Christ was by his own 
death a witness for the truth, so also were his followers by 
theirs. In testimony of their faith in his name, they suffered 
and died for his name's sake. The name of Christian un- 
abjured was the legal and imperial warrant for execution. 
The question put to them by a Roman governor was whether 
they were Christians. Again and again they were interro- 
gated in the same terms, and were threatened with death at 
every word. The edict of Trajan, as such the law of the 
empire, bears, that if they were accused and convicted of 
being Christians, they were to be punished ; if any who were 
accused denied being Christians, and gave decisive proof of 
the sincerity of their denial by reproaching the name of 
Christ and supplicating heathen gods, they were pardoned ; 
they were cleared of the accusation of believing in Jesus by 
doing what no Christian would ever do. The kings and ru- 
lers of the earth, as foretold, took counsel together against the 
Lord and against his Anointed, and exerted their power to ex- 
tirpate his faith. But had they taken counsel how they could 
confirm and consecrate the testimony of every martyr to all 
succeeding generations, they could not have accomplished 
that purpose so perfectly as by fixing as they did on the one 
essential point " whether each one was a Christian," and by 
endowing them thus with the power of sealing their testi- 
mony with their blood. 

It would be hard, we think, to deny that the love of liberty 
glowed in the breast of the courageous Hampden, or that 
such a feeling was unknown to those who fought and fell 
with the devoted Kosciusko. And is it generous or is it just, 
as skeptics have often done, to pass by, as a worthless and 
disregarded thing, the blood-bought testimony of those who 
freely laid down their lives in express verification of their 
faith in Jesus 1 Is the mind of man so blinded by the god of 
this world, and his heart so corrupted by the love of it, that 
the death in mortal combat of those who, contending for the 
death of their enemies, fell in the pursuit of civil liberty (a 
precious blessing, but often only an abused name), shall be- 
come the theme of high eulogy, and their names be adduced 
in honour of an age ; and yet. at the same time, shall the death 
of Christian martyrs, with whose self-devotedness no pas- 
sionate or selfish feeling intermingled, become in contrast a 
theme for reckless ribaldry ? And shall all the power of their 
matchless testimony give way for ever in the minds of thou- 
sands to a mere metaphysical subtilty, which comes out on 
trial a demonstrated and palpable fallacy, and which itself, 
as foretold, is a direct proof of the inspiration of one of the 
martyred witnesses of Jesus'? We boast of enlightened 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES* 211 

times. But whither, in this respect, has the reason, no less 
than the better feelings, of man fled, that testimony, in itself 
so abundant, and vouched for centuries in a manner altogeth- 
er unparalled in history, should have been so greatly dispar- 
aged ? If any demonstration could give evidence of any truth, 
it surely cannot be denied that those believed in Jesus who, 
when asked if they were Christians, resolved the question 
by their death rather than deny their master. And this fact 
once admitted, and the concessions of their enemies being 
borne in mind, and all the concomitant, circumstances con- 
sidered, how can the conclusion be rationally resisted, that 
their faith was true even as it was strong 1 

An instance may be adduced to show in what manner 
Christians testified to their common faith. 

The epistle of Clement, written in the name of the Church 
of Rome to that of Corinth, may be said to transmit to all 
subsequent ages the testimony of these churches to the faith 
of the gospel. Epistles in the New Testament were ad- 
dressed to both ; and they had alike been converted to Chris- 
tianity by apostles. Tacitus has shown us how, in that very 
age, the faith of the Christians at Rome was the cause, from 
the odious name which they bore, of the martyrdom of many. 
In the days of Trajan, Ignatius, journeying as a pilgrim to 
the scene of his martyrdom, from Syria to Rome, wrote epis- 
tles to various churches (A.D. 107), and thus incidentally 
called forth their testimony, or confirmed the fact that their 
faith in Jesus was the same as his own, as deputations from 
the churches met him on the way, while he rejoicingly went 
to seal his testimony with his blood. An epistolary inter- 
change of Christian affection subsisted between him and the 
renowned Polycarp. And in the epistle of the Church of 
Smyrna concerning the martyrdom of Polycarp, which is ad- 
dressed to the Church of Philadelphia, and all the churches 
in every place, and to which Gibbon refers without the ex- 
pression of a doubt of its authenticity, we learn some pre- 
cise and striking facts illustrative of the faith, and patience, 
and faithfulness unto death of primitive martyrs ; and we read 
especially how that man's life was closed who had been the 
disciple and companion of the apostle that followed Jesus, 
till he stood at the foot of his cross as a witness of his death, 
and, in common with all the other apostles, was the witness 
also of his resurrection from the dead. 

Polycarp laid down his life at Smyrna, in the midst of the 
flock which for many years he had fed. And they knew his 
doctrine, as in his epistle it may still be read, to which he 
set his lifeblood as a seal. Many of them, as well as their 
pastor, were counted as sheep for the slaughter, whose mar- 
tyrdom preceded his. Imprisoned, and condemned to wild 
beasts, to the cross, or to the stake, because of their Chris 



212 OF THE GENUINENESS 

tian profession, they were in vain importuned, even by the 
proconsul, to regain their liberty and to redeem their lives 
by a word. The severest tortures were inflicted upon them, 
and their bodies were laid open by scourging, and placed on 
sharp instruments and the points of spears, to try if their 
spirits could be broken and their faith be disowned. Not 
one groan or cry could be extorted from many a victim, in 
their voluntary sacrifice of mortal life, though the spectacles 
at Smyrna, in the time of the games, seems in the variety of 
torments to have almost vied with that of Rome. When 
the savage crowd of dark idolators witnessed the dauntless 
magnanimity and indomitable faith of such Christian heroes, 
who triumphed over death, amazed at their fortitude, but en- 
raged at their steadfastness, they cried out, "Take away the 
atheists; let Polycarp be sought for."* The pagans in their 
wrath thus unconsciously called for a higher testimony, and 
soon witnessed a martyrdom, as the epistle terms it, accord- 
ing to the gospel. Soldiers went out into the country as 
against a thief, with swords, to seize the venerable bishop, 
who delivered himself into their hands, saying, " The will of 
the Lord be done." He supplied his enemies with food, and 
asked them for nothing but an hour to pray. This his prep- 
aration finished, he went forth to martyrdom. A magistrate 
met him by the way, took him in his chariot, and sought to 
cozen him by kindness to call Caesar Lord, and to offer sacri- 
fice ; but failing in his purpose, dashed him to the ground. 
The Christian champion, though hurt by his fall, having en- 
tered the arena in the midst of the clamorous crowd, next 
withstood the remonstrance and entreaty of the proconsul, 
who as vainly importuned him to have respect to his old 
age, as previously he had urged a juvenile martyr to have 
pity on his youth, who, despite of his entreaties, fearlessly 
provoked the wild beasts, that he might be more speedily 
their prey. When asked to swear by Caesar, and to join in 
the cry, " take away the atheists," Polycarp looked round 
upon all the idolatrous crowd, and stretched forth his hands 
towards them, groaning in spirit, looked up to heaven and 
said, " Take away the atheists !" Farther besought to swear 
by Caesar and be free, and to speak evil of Christ, he replied 
at the word, " Eighty and six years have I served him ; never 
has he injured me ; and how can I blaspheme my King and 
my Saviour!" "Swear by Caesar's fortune." "Why do 
you constrain me to swear by Caesar] do you know who I 
am ? Hear me openly proclaim, I am a Christian. And if 
you wish to learn the Christian doctrine, give me a day, and 

* Aipe tovs aSeovg, tyreicS-a) HoXvKaptros. Epist., p. 16 ; Cote]., t, ii.,p. 196. 
The term atheists, applied to the Christians, as denying the heathen gods, 
shows that the religion of Jesus was their only crime, or the faith for 
which they were put to death. 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 213 

bear me." To the proconsul he appealed to judge of the 
truth of the doctrine which he maintained ; and he owned 
his obedience in all things not sinful to the powers that were 
ordained of God. But the arguments of paganism lay in the 
cage of the lions ; and when remonstrance failed, the reason 
and reply of the proconsul was, " I have wild beasts, and to 
them will I cast you if your mind be not changed." " Call 
them," said Polycarp; " we are firmly resolved not to pass 
from better things to worse ; but for me the transition is 
blessed — from severities to things just" — the just recompense 
of reward. Again the proconsul exclaimed, "If you fear 
not the wild beasts, the fire shall consume you." " You 
threaten me with the flames of an hour," was the answer ; 
" and you know not of the fire that shall never be quenched. 
But wherefore this delay, bring what you will ?" Thrice 
was it proclaimed throughout the multitude that Polycarp 
had confessed himself a Christian. That word was his death- 
warrant. Instantaneously the shout arose, " This is the vio- 
lator of our temples ; this is the destroyer of our gods, who 
said that their images are not to be adored. Send out a lion 
on Polycarp." But the time for such sports was then pass- 
ed, and the deed was not lawful. And all with one voice 
cried out that he should be burned alive. Jews and pagans 
rushed to the workshops and baths for fuel and fire ; and all 
things in a moment were ready for the sacrifice. So also 
was the victim. And when, according to wont, they were 
about to fix him to the stake, " Leave me as I am," said the 
magnanimous martyr; "He w T ho gives me power to endure 
the fire will enable me, without your fastenings, to remain 
unmoved in the midst of it." Ready and willing to be of- 
fered up, he raised his eyes to heaven and said, as neither 
atheist, norpagan, nor skeptic ever spake, " Lord God Om- 
nipotent, Father of thy beloved and blessed Son, Jesus Christ, 
by whom we have obtained the knowledge of thee ; God of 
angels and of archangels, of universal nature, and of all the 
race of the just who live before thee, I give thee thanks that 
thou hast accounted me worthy of this day and of this hour. 
For this and for all things I bless thee, with thy eternal, di- 
vine, and beloved Son, unto whom, with thee and the Holy 
Spirit, be glory, both now and for ever, Amen."* That song 
was begun which shall never cease, and that testimony was 
given which shall never die. The spirit of faith would not 
be subdued ; and in the breast of the martyr the love of Je- 
sus was stronger than death. The proof of his faith was its 
trial by fire, and the truth of the gospel shone brighter in 
the flame. In what the Spirit said to the angel of the church 
of Smyrna, we read, " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will 

* Epist, de Polycarpi Martyrio, p, 19-25, 



214' OF THE GENUINENESS 

give thee a crown c«f life."* And thus died Polycarp, the 
bishop of Smyrna. 

Many martyrs preceded Polycarp, as many followed after 
him. In the earliest ages of the church, every Christian had 
to come forth from the crowd of pagans or of Jews, who 
thirsted for their blood, because of the change of their faith. 
The religion of Jesus was then new ; the facts on which it 
was founded were then recent ; the lives of the witnesses 
were in jeopardy every hour, and were not held dear for 
their King and their Saviour ; the natural love of life and 
the natural power of sin were alike overcome by the strength 
of their faith ; if in this life only they had had hope in Je- 
sus, they were of all men most miserable ; and they must, 
as then they might, have been assured by infallible proofs of 
the certainty of the things in which they believed. And 
their testimony was not to be trodden down by the wild 
beasts which devoured them, nor to be extinguished with the 
fire in which their bodies were consumed. In the lifetime 
of some of the apostles, a public spectacle in the capital of 
the world openly showed, in all the diversity of cruelties 
which satanic ingenuity could devise, by the death of many 
believers in Jesus, how great things they suffered for his name's 
sake, and how they were offered up in the service and sacrifice 
of their faith. And if we look to Bithynia or Smyrna, we 
see how, in the immediately subsequent generation, the way 
to martyrdom was filled with those who bore the testimony 
of Jesus. " Freedom shrieks," it has been said, when her 
votaries fall ; but faith shouted when her martyrs died. The 
stake to which Christians were bound, the fiery pile with 
which they were surrounded, the red-hot iron chair in which 
they sat, the boiling oil into which they were plunged, the 
wild beasts to which they were cast, the cross to which, like 
their Master, they were nailed, the sword of the gladiator, or 
the axe of the executioner under which they fell, the com- 
bustible materials in which they were w r rapped, and enkin- 
dled, and burned to death, and all the variety of torments to 
which they were subjected, were the modes by which pa- 
gans, in their blind and furious zeal to extirpate and extin- 
guish Christianity, enhanced their testimony to a faith found- 
ed on cognizable facts. Their fingers moved not over parch- 
ment like those of witnesses to other truths ; nor were their 
hands uplifted, as in a court of law, to give the last solemn 
confirmation which man can innocently require of man ; but 
after having been themselves living epistles by the holiness 
of their lives, they laid open their inmost veins to the scourge, 
they kissed the cross, or embraced the pile, and with their 
burning and bleeding bodies, when dissolved, their testimony 
was written in "long streams upon the ground." 

* Rev. ii., 10. 



OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 215 

The reader may have thought that the Christian testimony- 
was spoken of with disparagement in the preceding pages, 
as if of itself it were untenable or weak. But none who 
knows in the least what it is, and how wholly free, when 
rigidly tried, of any such imputation, can think for a moment 
that it is to be given up, or that any portion of it can ever be 
justly abandoned, for all the cavils of captious skeptics, who 
mock the evidence they dare not meet. Viewed singly and 
disjoined from prophecy, it may not have been always seen 
in its true position, nor valued according to its proper strength. 
But well may it seem sufficient, though standing alone, to 
convince or to condemn gainsayers. It has a positive pow- 
er, which is increased and not diminished by the relation 
which it bears to other portions of the Christian evidence. 
Precious in the sight of the Lord, as it is said in the Old Tes- 
tament, is the death of his saints ; and more precious than 
their life's blood, as they themselves did prize it, is the tes- 
timony of the martyrs of Jesus, the rich legacy bequeathed 
by their death to the church in every age. It is not, indeed, 
to be regarded as the-sole evidence of the Christian revela- 
tion ; nor is any other to be regarded solely, exclusive of it. 
But the voice of prophets conjoined with that of martyrs, 
each being re-echoed by the enemies of our faith, form the 
harmony and the power of the Christian evidence ; and uni- 
tedly charm so wisely, that they might well disenchant the 
doubting mind of the demon of unbelief. And instead of 
there being any weakness or discordance on the one side or 
on the other, now that the testimony borne by heathens and 
believers to Jesus and to his cause is, though but in part, 
before us, and that some estimate of its value should here 
be made, we feel utterly incompetent to the task ; and were 
our limited space enlarged a hundred fold, we would despair 
of being able to convey any adequate conception of its ful- 
ness and its force. 

In vain would we ask of any other book or of any other 
history so full and continuous a testimony on its behalf. 
And in vain would we look for any other events in the whole 
history of man, accredited to the world by the martyrdom of 
thousands as a testimonial of their truth. And nowhere 
Could we see such a combination of principalities and pow- 
ers, the intellect of the wise, the interests of the worldly, 
the efforts of the mighty, and the passions of the mean, the 
imperial mandate, and the popular phrensy, all directed at 
once and for a long continuance against any cause as against 
the Christian religion, from the period of its first promulga- 
tion in the world. Men without a weapon but a word, and 
without a crime but a name, withstood the world in enmity 
and at war against them. The religion of the empire fell 
before the fishermen of Galilee. Earthly conquerors might, 



216 OP THE GENUINENESS 

like the Mohammedans, impose on the vanquished an earthly 
and a sensual creed, to which the carnal mind would yield 
an easy credence. But in the propagation of Christianity, 
the weak things of the world set at naught the things that 
were mighty ; the death of its defenders gave new life to 
their cause; the vanquished conquered; and even in death 
itself they were victorious. And if ever on earth there was 
a time when an illustration was given, that truth is great and 
will prevail, it was when the gospel, in its purity and prime, 
triumphed in defiance of persecution ; and when the witnesses 
of Jesus, who knew in whom they believed, were faithful un- 
to death, and all the gates of hell could not prevail against 
the ivord of their testimony. And how else, but from infal- 
lible proofs and demonstration of power and of the Spirit, 
could they have been persuaded of the truth of a new reli- 
gion, for which they abandoned the faith of their fathers, suf- 
fered the loss of all things, became a spectacle to the world, 
took up their cross and followed their crucified Master, 
adorned his holy doctrine, crucified the flesh, overcame the 
world, and, rather than breathe a syllable against Jesus, vol- 
untarily braved death, however terrible its form 1 

If it be alleged that multitudes of both sexes, of all ranks, 
and of every age, exposed themselves to reproach, misery, 
and death, by irrationally and causelessly embracing a faith 
which commanded them to try all things, and to be always 
ready to give a reason of their hope ; that self-preservation, 
he first law of our nature, was changed, without any rational 
persuasion, or just and adequate cause, into a widespread 
and prevailing principle of self-destruction, and ease and lib- 
erty were forfeited, torture courted, and death defied, with- 
out a valid reason, rather than cast a few grains on an altar, 
or utter a few words which implied a denial of events then 
recently and openly transacted; that impostors were com- 
bined, to their manifest misery, for the promotion of righte- 
ousness ; and that Christians were inured to habits of temper- 
ance, chastity, integrity, and every virtue, from the belief of 
a lie, then it must be admitted that every law of the human 
mind was suspended and subverted; that hell must have 
changed its character and man his nature ; and that a mira-» 
cle would not be here sought for in vain. But the whole 
history of man, and the instinctive feelings in every human 
breast, protest against the belief of a moral phenomenon so 
monstrous, and so invariably contrary to universal experi- 
ence. 

Though the case, even in this single view, stands thus, yet 
the whole Christian testimony is disregarded and discredited 
by Humists solely because of the nature of the facts which 
it is borne to substantiate. But it is in this very thing, or 
because of the very truths which constitute the Christian 



of the New testament scriptures. 217 

faith, that, as remains to be seen, the great strength of the 
testimony lies. For the truths to which witness unto death 
was borne are those only which prophets had foretold ; and 
the history of the martyrs of Jesus, at that express and de- 
fined period, is summarily comprehended in their word. It 
is true, in fact, as it was written in prophecy, that after the 
Messiah was cut off, the city and sanctuary of Jerusalem were 
destroyed, the daily sacrifice which was offered there was 
taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate was 
set up. But the people that knew their God were strong, 
and did exploits; and they that understood among the people 
instructed many; yet they fell by the sword, and by flame, 
and by captivity, and by spoil many days. " The blood, of 
the martyrs was the seed of the church ;" and the sure word 
of prophecy w 7 as fulfilled concerning those who loved not 
their lives unto the death, in testifying those things which 
the prophets aforetime had testified of Jesus. 



CHAPTER VII. 

APPROPRIATION OF THE ARGUMENTS OF CELSUS, PORPHYRY, AND 
JULIAN, IN PROOF OF THE GENUINENESS OF THE NEW TESTA- 
MENT, AND THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 

SECTION I. 

The religion of Jesus, which braved the edicts of empe- 
rors, and which no iron yoke could crush, was not destined 
to fall before the pen of sophists. It prospered and pre- 
vailed against every mode of trial, and every form of oppo- 
sition that could be devised or put in action against it. And 
history is clear that it never sunk till first it was corrupted. 
Christians were slaughtered, but Christianity increased. It 
frustrated the counsels of princes, and set at naught their 
power ; it braved the rage of wild beasts, and the fury of 
barbarous men ; and it passed unhurt through the fierceness 
of fire. It was not for death to daunt the spirits of those 
who believed in Him by whom death itself had been van- 
quished : and when terror failed to extirpate faith, philoso- 
phy, falsely so called, took up the task which principalities 
and powers had tried in vain to accomplish. But it behooved 
not those who professed to be guided by that light which 
alone can enlighten the nations, and whose commanded duty 
it was, by an authority which they held to be Divine, to be 
ready always to give an answer to every man that asked 

T 



218 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

them a reason of the hope that was in them, to shrink from 
the arguments of gainsayers. The weapons that are not 
carnal are those alone which the Christian can take up. But 
with these, when needful, he may contend earnestly for the 
faith. The vantage ground of reason is the proper field of 
Truth ; and that " the children of the light" must ever claim 
as their own, where no foe, Math impunity, can stand up 
against them. And in proof that the God of Truth is on 
their side, it is their prerogative, we maintain, to keep that 
field which they claim, and their privilege to hold forth the 
surrendered weapons of their enemies, as the tokens of their 
triumph. 

The adversaries of the gospel, in these latter times, while 
indulging in theories of a seemingly opposite tendency, have 
practically taught us that, judging from experience, nothing is 
more credible, however strange at first it may seem, than 
that the bitterest enemies of our faith should unconsciously, 
even without resigning their arms for our use, prove its 
ablest defenders. Of yore, as of late, they have done all 
the work ; and they have left nothing for the Christian to do 
but to repeat their words and to tell of their doings. Do we 
want a witness above all others to testify of the facts which, 
in modern times, form the express accomplishment of an- 
cient prophecies 1 there is not another, as the man of our 
choice, who can stand up beside Volney, and claim the suf- 
frages of all believers. Do we seek, according to the Scrip- 
tures, for the great argument of scoffers in the last days 1 
the scoffing Hume, applauded and followed by a host of kin- 
dred spirits, proclaims himself its author. Do we stand in 
need of an interpreter, by facts and not by fancies, of the 
more symbolical predictions which have long baffled the 
skill of Christian writers, and which involve the decline and 
fall of the Roman empire, and, in connexion with it, the fate 
of the church and the history of the world, who can be com- 
pared to Gibbon, whose name is associated with the theme 1 
Seek we, in looking to times long past, to know of the ori- 
gin and rise of our faith, and to find some record concerning 
it so ancient as closely to follow up, in time, the Acts of the 
Apostles ] Tacitus, the Roman historian, speaking of a new 
religion, which he called a detestable superstition, is ready 
with his vouchers. And do we inquire more closely, wheth- 
er, in fulfilment of ancient prophecy, kings and rulers took 
counsel against the Lord and his Anointed 1 Pliny and 
Trajan, the governor of Bithynia and the emperor of Rome, 
present their letters, and show us the counsel that was asked 
and given. Are we more inquisitive still, and do we wish to 
be informed whether the disciples of Jesus, as it is recorded 
that he foretold, were hated of all men for his name's sake ? 
another emperor also bears witness to the importunate de- 



ARGUMENTS OF CELSUS. 219 

mands and loud clamours that were raised and urged against 
them ; and, as if he had sat upon his throne on purpose to 
verify the words of Jesus, that Christians would be brought 
before governors and kings for his name's sake, he issued a 
rescript, in which we read that they were not to be charged 
but in a legal manner in court, where they might answer for 
themselves, and that the governor should take cognizance of 
any accusations against them. Or if, distrusting the efficacy 
of the faith in Jesus to purify the heart, while w 7 e look at 
nominal Christendom as it is, unpurged from iniquity, we 
seek to know if ever there was a time when the doctrine 
of the gospel was adorned by those whe professed it, and 
whether the life of the Christian w T as then in happy har- 
mony with the death of the martyr, the enemies of our faith 
take'np the testimony in their behalf, and show us that their 
lives were practical illustrations of the precepts of Jesus. 

With the proofs of such infatuation on the part of our en 
emies, in ancient as in modern times, multiplying before us 
and thus instructed, 

Fas est et ab hoste doceri, 

would we not be forsaking experience as our guide if — in 
seeking some evidence that the New Testament Scriptures 
w^ere written in the age and by the persons they profess to 
be, even by the evangelists and apostles of Jesus, and also 
that the facts of his life and the nature of his religion were 
the tokens and testimonials of his Messiahship — we were 
not to inquire whether our enemies be not here also ready 
with their aid 1 In the providence of God, we may be per- 
mitted to say, for such things come not by chance, it is even 
so. And they who first vented their malice against the gos- 
pel by their writings, as others did by actions, are now, in 
their "proper order, our witnesses, and lead us on to the 
direct demonstration that the gospel is alike authentic and 
Divine. 

The faith of Christians stands not in the wisdom of man, 
but in the power of God. From first to last the wisdom of 
man has often been in active exercise against it. The talent 
of some of our adversaries is not to be denied, however 
much the mode of its exercise may be deplored. And, with- 
out impeaching their title to philosophy, we may wish that 
they were truly wise. Things Divine, as is written, may be 
hid from the wise and prudent, and yet be revealed unto 
babes. But it is also said that God frustrateth the tokens of 
liars, and turneth wise men backward. And however great 
may be the talent of those whose wisdom is leagued with 
error and directed against truth, they only make the triumph 
of the cause which they oppose ultimately the more con- 
spicuous and complete. And not in a solitary instance only, 



220 APPROPRIATION 6P THE 

but by repeated and increasing examples, their talents, in 
despite of them, are turned to the proof of the word of the 
Lord. And the greater the primary display of their ingenu- 
ity, so much the more do they labour for the final confirma- 
tion of the Christian faith. And as Volney, by drawing with 
much labour a picture of Palestine, as if he had stood alter- 
nately on Pisgah and Tabor, was thereby the better witness 
of the faithfulness of the picture drawn by the prophets, and 
manifested thus the extreme precision of the prophetic word, 
so the earliest writers among the enemies of our faith, Cel- 
sus, Porphyry, and Julian, the talented infidel penmen of their 
times, afford a new series of illustrations of the same truth : 
and by taxing all their art, in their own time and way, to 
disparage the scriptures by multiplying objections, they mul- 
tiplied proofs. Seeking to sustain a system of error, and 
deriding as foolishness the truths of the gospel, they were 
able, by an ingenuity devoid of ingenuousness, to show, in a 
great variety of instances, how the writings of the disciples 
of Jesus appeared unto them foolishness : and thus, as every 
reader may judge, committed by their own words, and taken 
in their own craftiness, they adopted the most effectual 
means, above all others in their power, of imparting the 
most abundant and decisive proof of the antiquity and of the 
genuineness, as such, of those very scriptures which they 
vilified ; and, while catering for infidelity, they have laid up a 
treasure of imperishable testimony to the genuineness of the 
scriptures, which was not controverted in their time ; and 
now, when the inspiration of the prophets may be witnessed 
by every man who has eyes to see and ears to hear, be he 
Jew or Gentile, that fact transforms their objections into 
proofs as clear and conclusive as those of Volney. And 
palpable illustrations are thus given, from which all may see 
how the simplicity of truth triumphs over all the plausibility 
of falsehood. 

The renowned champions of paganism strove to overthrow 
Christianity by reason and ridicule ; and failed not to achieve 
all that argument could accomplish. Their talents and la- 
bours subverted the faith of some, served to sanction the in- 
credulity of more, and called forth, on the part of Christians, 
many vindications of the gospel from their violent assaults. 
Deists have joined with pagans in deeming their arguments 
unanswerable. And Gibbon states that " even the work of 
Cyril (against Julian) has not entirely satisfied the most fa- 
vourable judges ; and the Abbe de la Bleterie (Preface a 
VHist. de Jovian) wishes that some theologien philosophe (a 
strange centaur) would undertake the refutation of Julian,"* 
by whose superior merit, in the estimation of his eulogists, 

* Gibbon's Hist., vol. iv., p. 81. 



ARGUMENTS OF CELSUS. 221 

the celebrated name of Porphyry was effaced. Some of the 
arguments of Porphyry have been renewed in modern times. 
And it may be admitted that "the objection, as stated by 
Origen from Celsus, is sometimes stronger than his own an- 
swers. r * 

The genuineness of the Christian Scriptures, as has been 
often shown, is manifestly established by the fact that they 
were quoted as such in the earliest ages, by heathens as 
well as by believers. And a few examples will show how 
incidentally this evidence is supplied. But while the record 
itself was held to be unquestionably genuine, many cavils 
were subtlely urged against the religion of Jesus as a rev- 
elation from Heaven, because its doctrines did not accord 
with the prejudices or fancies of men. And theories con- 
cerning matters of religious belief may be numbered among 
the many inventions which men sought out for themselves. 
But the question is no longer left to the arbitrament of vain 
imaginations, when the inspiration of those prophets is per- 
ceived and admitted who foretold the coming of the Mes- 
siah. And as the nations that strove against the Lord ivere 
hewn by his servants the prophets and fell before their word, a 
like fate by the same means awaits those who, from first to 
last, have unconsciously argued from predicted facts against 
the Christian religion ! And now that the inspiration of the 
prophets has its proof in hundreds of existing facts, to a de- 
gree that no ancient pagan could have credited, the best an- 
swer to the objections of skeptics against the tenets or doc- 
trines of the gospel is to appropriate them as proofs that the 
word of the Lord by the prophets has been fulfilled. And 
though these arguments of our adversaries were seemingly 
as strong as once was the wall of Babylon, which for a sea- 
son held captive the people of the Lord, yet, like it, they too 
may thus be swept with the besom of destruction, till nothing be 
left but confirmations of his word. 

In repeated instances, the same objections, couched some- 
times in the. most revolting terms, so as to forbid their un- 
necessary repetition, were urged repeatedly by the earliest 
opponents of Christianity as by some of their late imitators. 
It is not to be wondered at that a holy doctrine should be 
hated by the children of men. And as the same spirit of per- 
secution manifested itself, in various places and in different 
ages, against those who bare witness to the faith, and the 
same kind of engines of torture were used in places far sep- 
arated, so the invention of men, exercised in another man- 
ner, has been manifested in the adoption of the selfsame in- 
vectives against the doctrines of the gospel from age to age. 
All that we here ask them is. that they would not begrudge 

* Paley's Evidences. 
T2 



222 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

us the use of their own arguments, and that they themselves 
would.look to their refutation as well as to their use. Many 
of them can happily be traced to their original source ; and 
they were plentifully supplied in the second, the third, and 
the fourth centuries of our era. 

Congenial spirits have congenial thoughts, whatever may 
be the diversity of time and place. Porphyry may be classed 
with Gibbon, and Celsus with Paine. With a boldness that 
was great but not inimitable, Celsus entitled his work " The 
Word of Truth," and it bears a strong affinity to " The Age 
of Reason." And both the ancient and the modern calum- 
niator of the word of God chose alike to confute the Chris- 
tians out of their own writings ; the latter not sufficiently 
reflecting that, in adopting that method of " extinguishing 
Christianity," as he threatened, the same task had been ex- 
ecuted with equal talent at an earlier period of the second 
century than that in which his was undertaken in the eigh- 
teenth; and, consequently, if the argument was valid, that 
Christianity must have been extinguished many centuries be- 
fore. His arguments had not the novelty of Hume's one, 
which is a saying peculiar to " the latter days." And to the 
modern Epicureans who mock at the truth, whose god is 
their belly and whose glory is their shame, nothing was left 
but that, labouring in their vocation by gleaning up the filth 
of former generations, they might the better illustrate their 
own scriptural character in their own time, and boasting of 
liberty while they themselves are the children of corruption, foam 
out their own shame. To know the true value of all such ar- 
guments against the scriptures, they have only to be drawn 
in large numbers from the first opponents of our faith, against 
whom we may thus easily and truly turn their threat against 
Christians of confuting, and even more than confuting, them 
out of their own writings. 

It is related in the Acts of the Apostles that when Paul, at 
Athens, saw the city wholly given up to idolatry, and there- 
fore disputed in the synagogue with the Jews, and in the 
market-place daily with them that met him, then certain phi- 
losophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered 
him. And some said, What will this babbler say 1 other some, 
He seemeth to be a setter-forth of strange gods : because he 
preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection, Acts xvii., 
17, 18. At that time, when they first heard a Jew unfolding 
the faith as it is in Jesus, the philosophers of that city, which 
was so renowned over the world for its wisdom, might have 
deemed it condescension to listen to Paul ; and might have 
derided him as a babbler, and mocked at the " new doctrine" 
and strange things which he taught. Then the pillars of 
their Pantheon were not shaken, and it promised to be an 
everlasting temple to all the gods. But when, even while 



ARGUMENTS OF CELSUS. 223 

yet new, the doctrine first taught by Paul in the market-place 
of Athens had attained a sway over the spirits of men, to 
the power and to the progress of which all that had ever been 
spoken in the groves of the Academy was not once to be 
compared, when the heathen temples w r ere deserted, and 
when the unpurchased sacrifices might have been cast to the 
dogs, the cause of Jesus, however hated, was not thus to be 
despised ; and even philosophers, in trying to resist the effi- 
cacy of the " foolishness of preaching," which survived and 
overmatched every other opposition, had to put all their in- 
genuity, and art, and reason to the task against the new doc- 
trine that threatened to supersede their indulgent paganism. 
Conformable to the incidental circumstance recorded in scrip- 
ture history, to which we have alluded, is the fact that, of 
all those with whose arguments we are acquainted in this 
distant age, an Epicurean philosopher was the first to " en- 
counter" the Christians by his writings, in which, too, it may 
be remarked, he displays precisely the same spirit as that by 
which his predecessors at Athens are here characterized. 
IUmight not be worth while, with abundant matter of direct 
evidence before us, to mark how the same character is given 
of the Athenians in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Ora- 
tions of Demosthenes, and how, at the same time, Celsus 
also supports the character of an Epicurean philosopher, as 
described in the same passage ; but it may not be amiss, in 
order to show the frame of the mind of such a witness, to 
draw an illustration of the manner in which an Epicurean 
philosopher then " mocked" at the doctrine of the resurrec- 
tion of the dead. " There is," says Celsus, " another absurd- 
ity of theirs, that when God shall throw a fire on the world, 
and all other things shall be destroyed, they alone shall re- 
main ; and that not only the living, but they also which have 
been ever so long dead, shall come forth out of the earth in 
their own bodies (or in the same flesh), which is no other 
than the hope of worms. For what soul of a man would de- 
sire a putrefied body "? Nor is this doctrine of yours agreed 
to by all Christians, for many among you reject it as impure, 
and abominable, and impossible. For how is it possible that 
a body which has entirely been corrupted should return to 
its own nature, and to its primitive constitution which it has 
once lost ! To make flesh eternal is a thing so unreason- 
able, that God neither can nor will do it."* There is a sim- 
ilarity, nay, identity of argument or of declamation between 
the most ancient and the most recent opposers of the gospel, 
and reasons similar to the above, in which Scripture is per- 
verted and God blasphemed, may be found of no remote date 
in the works of another philosopher of the school of Epicu- 

* Lardner. vol. vii., p. 245. 



224 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

rus (Byron). It is easy to see how scripture can be at once 
perverted and ridiculed. The answer of Origen is that the 
body at the resurrection will be changed for the better, and 
be fitted for the soul in a state of perfection. 

Flesh and blood, the Scriptures of the New Testament af- 
firm, cannot inherit the kingdom of God. And that which is 
sown in corruption shall be raised in glory. But they do af- 
firm that all that are in their graves shall come forth at the 
voice of the Son of God, those who have done good to the 
resurrection of life, and they who have done evil to the resur- 
rection of damnation. But this doctrine, which skeptics scoff 
at till that, day shall come, is but an echo of the voice of proph- 
ets, who told of judgments already passed and fulfilling now, 
as well as of those that are to come. "Many of them that 
sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlast- 
ing life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." 
Dan. xii., 2. And the resurrection of Christ, which gives 
assurance of that of his followers, was also plainly foretold, 
"Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell (in the grave), nor suf- 
fer thine Holy One to see corruption." Ps. xvi., 10. ■ 

Although it cannot be disputed that the early opponents of 
the Christian faith displayed great talent and zeal against it, 
and that they were well versant in the literature of their day, 
yet, by a fatality instructive to skeptics, their writings are 
now known chiefly by their fragments, or by the copious ex- 
tracts which have been preserved by others, and the refu- 
tations they met with in the early ages. But while enough 
has been preserved for the use of believers, as well as for 
adoption by modern infidels, the very arguments, which may 
now be adduced for a better purpose, show how bitterly they 
hated and how boldly they derided the faith of the gospel, and 
how keenly they contended against it. But chiefly known 
now as the adversaries of Christianity, they who from four- 
teen to seventeen centuries ago strove, in their day, to put 
down the Christian religion by ridicule and by argument in 
their published works, have had their names and their wri- 
tings preserved by Christians, and owe unto them their fame, 
whether for good or evil. And if, as was avowedly the case 
with one of their fellow-heathens, a persecutor in another 
form, they wrote in opposition to Christianity for a name in 
all future ages, then the lesson should not be lost on their 
more humble imitators ; for experience, the idol which they 
profess to worship, and to set up against scriptural truths, 
might well convey a salutary admonition to other speculatists 
in such hopes by such means, and teach them the value and 
the honour of having their names and their writings preserv- 
ed and transmitted by the instrumentality of those whom 
they affected to despise, and of being finally condemned to 
everlasting fame by the ruin which they wrought to the cause 
which they espoused. 



ARGUMENTS OF CELSTJS. 225 

The elaborate treatise of Celsus may be said to be in a 
great measure preserved in the works of Origen, who not 
only states his objections, as they were then and long after 
well known in his work, but has preserved them also in his 
own language. " Origen's answer," to use the words of Sher- 
lock, " is not a general reply to Celsus. but a minute exami- 
nation of all his objections, even of those which appeared to 
Origen most frivolous. For his friend Ambrosius, to whom 
he dedicates the work, desired him to omit nothing. In or- 
der to this examination, Origen states the objections of Cel- 
sus in his own words ; and, that nothing might escape him, 
he takes them in the order in which Celsus had placed them."* 

Origen adduces the objections of Celsus in order to refute 
them, and to maintain the truth of Christianity against all the 
reasonings and raillery of the heathen philosopher. And 
while they are thus before us, and have been thus carefully 
preserved in a manner that is remarkable, their high antiquity 
alone converts every objection then drawn from the Scrip- 
tures into a demonstration of their prior existence, and of 
their genuineness as the original Christian writings. Celsus 
could not have cavilled at the Scriptures before they existed ; 
and Origen could not have answered the minute, laboured, 
and sarcastic treatise of Celsus before it was written. And 
all that we now need is not the answer of Origen against 
Celsus, but the objections of Celsus, often common to him 
and modern infidels, against the Scriptures. Were we even 
to suppose that these objections have never been rightly an- 
swered to this day, it would not affect the purpose for which 
we would now adduce them; and without entering here into 
the controversy between an advocate of the gospel and the 
defender of paganism, it is enough for our object that the truth 
or the inspiration of Scripture was a subject of contention, 
and that Origen had to stand up in the defence of the gospels, 
and to vindicate the very words of our Scriptures against the 
stigmas of an adversary, even as a Christian would in the 
present day. And it may be manifest that arguments which 
infidels in all ages have urged against the credibility of the 
gospel as a divine dispensation, are direct confirmations of 
the Messiahship of Jesus. 

Celsus, joining his testimony to that of Tacitus and others, 
stigmatizes Jesus as " the author of this sedition," as he 
terms Christianity (p. 225). We agree with Celsus that it 
was a sedition ; but a sedition against the powers of dark- 
ness, which is allegiance to the God of heaven. And Celsus 

* Lardner, vol. vii., p. 277. "Fabricius and Lardne-r," says Gibbon, 
"have accurately cornpiled all that can now be discovered of Julian's work 
against the Christians." — Hist., vol. iv., p. 81. Lardner has no less accu- 
rately adduced many passages of Celsus in tne same volume, vii., p. 210- 
378, to which the reader is specially referred 



226 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

agrees with us that Jesus was its author. But he, like Ju- 
lian after him, does more. And by this selfsame allegation 
and argument, they show that in the sedition which Chris- 
tianity raised against idolatry and the powers of darkness, it 
is proved to be the kingdom which, in the days of those 
kingdoms of which the Roman w r as the last, the God of 
heaven was, according to the prophets, to set up, and which 
was destined finally to break in pieces and consume all these 
kingdoms, and to stand for ever. 

" It is but a few years ago," says Celsus, u since he deliv- 
ered this doctrine who is now reckoned by the Christians 
to be the Son of God." Pagan idolaters might have boasted 
of deities old as those of the Hindoos ; and Celsus himself 
might have bowed before many an image made by men's 
hands at a far earlier date than that of the time of Christ's 
appearance upon earth. But although we are not satisfied 
that the question, whether these deities or Jesus was most 
worthy to be worshipped, has thus to be philosophically de- 
termined now, it is some surer satisfaction to receive such 
early testimony from an enemy, that Jesus was then reck- 
oned by the Christians the Son of God ; and, reversing the 
reasoning of Celsus, that testimony is enhanced and not 
diminished, even because of the " few years" that intervened 
from the time that Jesus himself " had delivered his doc- 
trine" till an adversary thus bare witness to the fact ; or 
that Jesus delivered his doctrine at a time when the expec- 
tation was universal of the advent of the predicted Messiah. 

Celsus, while he settles the question as to the Divine mis- 
sion and the Divinity of Christ, argues, like a very pagan, 
that no God ever visited men without being received, espe- 
cially when he was expected ; and, moreover, he ridicules 
the contention between the Christians and the Jews, and 
deems it no better than the dispute, according to the proverb, 
about the shadow of an ass ; and reckoning it of no impor- 
tance, he resolves the whole into this : " both sides believ- 
ing that a Saviour of mankind is to come ; but they do not 
agree whether he who has been prophesied of be come or 
not." A believer in the oracles of Apollo might deride the 
word of the prophets of Israel ; but we cannot deem as no- 
thing the word of the Lord, nor think that he has called back 
his promise, who has assuredly sent forth his judgments. 
But, balancing things by their importance, we can leave un- 
touched the previous argument of Celsus, and the analogy 
drawn from paganism, and take up the testimony of Cel- 
sus that the Jews, no less than the Christians, believed in 
the coming of a Saviour of mankind ; and that the only ques- 
tion between them was, whether he who had been testified 
of was come or not. That question Celsus himself, by per- 
sonating a Jew in a large part of his work, while arguing 



ARGUMENTS OF CELSUS. 227 

against the Christians, and by thus, as it were, uniting, so 
far as he could, the testimony of both Jew and Gentile, and 
by the abundance of appeals to the life, the humiliation, and 
the death of Jesus, might enable us in a great measure to 
decide. And contemptible though he deemed it, while un- 
consciously supplying means still useful for its solution, it 
will scarcely be denied now that that very question is infi- 
nitely more important than all that ever were agitated in pa- 
gan times concerning all the gods of the heathen. None 
need to be told that the prophets of Israel were inspired ; 
that they testified of a Messiah, and that the rejection of Je- 
sus by the Jews is a necessary proof that he was the Christ. 

Celsus boasts of being able to " tell many things concern- 
ing the affairs of Jesus, and those too true, different from 
those written by the disciples of Jesus. But I purposely 
omit them." We know, as the last of the evangelists testi- 
fies in the last words of his gospel, that Jesus did " many 
other things" that were not written. But it would be draw- 
ing far too largely on our credulity to ask us to believe what 
indeed could only be insinuated rather than affirmed, that so 
subtle an adversary could have had recourse to other and 
better means of overthrowing the Christian faith than those 
which he adopted. He gives ample proof that it was not 
from want of will that he would have left the Christian cause 
uninjured wherever he could hope to wound it. And the 
fact, not to be misrepresented, is, that, whether purposely 
omitted or not, he has told nothing concerning the affairs of 
Jesus different from those written by the disciples of Jesus. 
And if there could possibly be a doubt of the reason of his 
refraining to do so, there is none as to his admission of the 
fact, which could not have been either known or stated if it 
had not been true, that the history of Jesus had been written 
by the disciples of Jesus. This carries up the testimony con- 
cerning the writings of the disciples of Jesus to that early 
age in which Celsus could even profess to know otherwise 
many things concerning the affairs of Jesus, and when the 
events of the life of a person so extraordinary, even in a hu- 
man sense, could not, from the mere fact of the prevalence 
of his religion, and the martyrdom of so many for his name's 
sake, have been unknown, and must have been inquired into. 
Moreover, the fact is expressly stated, that the history of the 
life of Jesus was written by his disciples, and these are thus 
peculiarly distinguished from those who embraced the Chris- 
tian doctrine or believed in their writings, whom he other- 
wise calls Christians, believers, &c. (Lard., p. 214.) 

What the histories of Jesus then received by Christians 
really were, and what they recorded concerning him, Celsus 
leaves us at no loss to know ; for in full confidence that no- 
thing could withstand his reasoning, he thus sets a seal upon 



228 APPR0PMA.TI0N OF THE 

their genuineness, " These things we have alleged to yon 
out of your own writings, not needing any other witnesses. 
Thus you are beaten with your own weapons." Celsus pro- 
duced no counter-testimony — bitter as was his enmity, he 
brought nothing, not the shadow of an evidence, and scarcely 
even the form of an accusation, from any other quarter — at a 
time when all other religions were tolerated, and every rnode 
of -paganism upheld; at a time when, as well as before and 
after, Christians were tortured to wring from them any charge 
against either their faith or their practice, the writer of a long' 
and elaborate work against them drew his objections against 
Christianity from the Scriptures, that is, literally, writings of 
the Christians alone ; and limited to them, whether by ne- 
cessity or choice, he could not reason against these writings, 
but from them. And hence it became his business to extract 
largely from the Scriptures ; and, for the sake of a single ar- 
gument, he had often to adduce various texts, and every at- 
tempt to show any contradiction or inconsistency between 
one passage and another involved the necessity of quoting 
both, and redoubled at every step the proof of the genuine- 
ness of the Scriptures, as written by the disciples of Jesus. 
But as to the boast of Celsus, that Christians were, by th© 
method he adopted, beaten with their own weapons, as he 
himself might have believed and also convinced others ; it- 
was not yesterday that they were thus beaten, and they yet- 
survive the shock. Nor will we give up one word of Scrip- 
ture for all the assaults of our enemies. And as to our own 
weapons being used against us as the instruments of our de-* 
feat, we grant that the warfare in writing was thus begun \rf 
Celsus, and that such was the first bold onset of our foes. But 
the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, is yet in 
our hands, and never shall be wrested from us. And although 
our opponents tried to turn it against us, and did indeed take 
up our weapons, we need but farther to show how effectually 
they used them, to prove that, on the issue of the contest, 
they will not take up their own. 

Such, in illustration, is the power of the reasoning of Cen- 
sus ; a-nd so nobly does he use our weapons, that in a single*, 
objection, stated in two lines, he gives evidence that none of 
the Gospels written by the disciples of Jesus were then un- 
known or unacknowledged, either by believers or unbeliev- 
ers, as the Christian Scriptures. "To the sepulchre of Je- 
sus there came fwo angels, as is said by some ; or, as by 
others, one." Matthew and Mark mention one ; Luke and 
John, two. The seeming contradiction — for there is, in real- 
ity, none — admits of an easy solution ; if one angel was seen 
at one time, might not two have been seen the next moment % 
but could Celsus have scrutinized the Gospels, as it is thus 
manifest that he did, if they had »ot then, existed* 



ARGUMENTS OF CELSUS, 229 

It is said, some of " the believers, as if they were drunk, 
take a liberty to alter the gospel from the first writing," &c. 
And in the space of eighty years after the death of the last 
of the evangelists, an unbeliever, as if he were infatuated, 
refers to ihejirst writing or original scripture account, while 
by the multiplicity of his references and extracts from the 
Gospels, he laboured hard, as if on purpose to enable us to 
judge that they are unaltered still. 

" Oh light ! oh truth !" exclaims our adversary, in refuta- 
tion of the gospel. " Jesus with his own mouth expressly 
declares these things, as you have recorded it, that there will 
come unto you other men, with like wonders, wicked men 
and impostors" (p. 217). The great discovery seems here to 
have been, that Jesus having foretold the coming of deceivers 
and false prophets, who would work wonders (Matt, vii., 15 ; 
xxiv., 11, 12; Mark xiii., 22), he himself was but as one of 
them. But whether Jesus was a wicked man, like those 
whose coming he foretold, is a question which may hereafter 
be left to the arbitration of other skeptics than Celsus. Nor 
is it clear as light, because their works were lying wonders, 
that his were the same. But well may the Christian exclaim, 
Oh light ! oh truth ! on thus hearing that these predictions 
of Christ, as recorded in Scripture, had been expressly declared 
with his own mouth. Could any light be clearer, or any truth 
more plain, than the testimony which is here given to the 
record, as containing the express words of Jesus 1 

An Epicurean philosopher was only labouring in his voca- 
tion and defending the doctrines of his master against an op- 
posing creed, in stigmatizing and ridiculing the precepts of 
Jesus. " They have such precepts as these : 6 Resist not him 
that injures you ; and if a man strike thee, as his phrase is, 
on the one cheek, offer to him the other also.'" And igno- 
rant of the difference between the dispensation of the law 
and of the gospel, Celsus contrasts the requirements of Je- 
sus with the tolerations of the law. " Moses," as he says, 
" encouraged the people to get riches, and destroy their ene- 
mies. But his Son (the son of God), the Nazarean man, 
delivers quite contrary laws. Nor will he admit a rich man, 
nor one that affects dominion, to have access to his Father. 
Nor will he allow men to take more care for food or treasure 
than the ravens : nor to provide for clothing so much as the 
lilies : and to him that has smitten once, he directs to offer 
that he may smite again." P. 216, 217. That the words of 
Jesus are here taken from our Gospels is perfectly manifest. 
And we need not wonder that a follower of Epicurus, look- 
ing for his happiness from the enjoyments of sense, should 
have stood up, as if in self-preservation, against so detested 
and murderous doctrines, in compliance with which his de- 
votion to his belly as his god would have been done away, 

U 



230 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

and an end would have been put to the very life of an Epi- 
curean. Nor was the doctrine to be borne, that revenge 
should cease to be a virtue, or retaliation to be esteemed a 
brave and honourable act, and that forgiveness of injuries 
and love of enemies should be exalted in their stead, to reg- 
ulate the spirit of so noble an animal as man. 

Of that saying of Jesus " that it is easier for a camel to 
pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to en- 
ter into the kingdom of God," he says, "it was plainly taken 
from Plato ; but Jesus had spoiled the observation of Plato, 
who says, To be very good and very rich is impossible." 
P. 213. The meaning may be analogous, but the expressions 
are not the same. But the saying of Jesus, as quoted by 
Celsus, we must do him the justice to say, is plainly taken 
from the gospel. 

That Jesus said, " I came not to call the righteous, but sin- 
ners to repentance ;" and that, on contrasting the humility of 
the contrite publican with the presumption of the self-right- 
eous Pharisee, he had pronounced the former justified rather 
than the latter, may be seen from the misinterpretation of 
Celsus. " It is a saying of the Christians that God was sent 
to sinners. But why was he not sent to those who were free 
from sin 1 What harm is it not to have sinned ? God ac- 
cepts an unrighteous man if he humbleth himself for his 
wickedness ; but a righteous man, who has practised virtue 
from the beginning, if he looks up to him he will not accept." 
P. 219. What else could a man, so spiritually blind, do, but 
testify of the Scriptures by abusing them 1 The free grace 
of God in calling sinners to repentance was repeatedly to 
him a theme of insulting scoffing and bitter invective, and 
has often been a stumbling-block to others than the self- 
righteous Pharisee, who have refused to listen to the invita- 
tions of the prophets as well as to the words of Jesus, Ho 
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath 
no money ; come ye, buy and eat ; yea, come buy wine and milk 
without money and without price. He maketh intercession for 
the transgressors. 

Jesus is contemptuously called " the Nazarean man," or 
man of Nazareth. We take the testimony as to the place of 
our Lord's abode, before his public ministry began, and to 
the passages of Scripture in which it is spoken of, as having 
come from that city which was lightly esteemed : neverthe- 
less, we are not ashamed of Jesus of Nazareth. P. 218. 

" If God would send forth a spirit from himself, what need 
had he to breathe him into the womb of a woman] For 
since he knew how to make men., he might have formed a 
body for this spirit." Thus vainly reasons Celsus against 
the doctrine of the incarnation of the Son of God, and thus 
clearly does he testify that, from the beginning, this doctrine 



ARGUMENTS OP CELSUS. 231 

of the gospel was ever the same. Unto the pure all things 
are pure ; but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is 
nothing pure ; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. 
And from the first to the last of our assailants, illustrations of 
this scriptural truth have been given, even in respect to the 
immaculate conception of the Son of God. But Celsus might 
have known, had he searched the prophecies of the Old Tes- 
tament as he scrutinized the writings of the New, that that 
very fact which seemed to shock his pagan apprehensions, 
and the narrative of which in the gospels he adduces against 
their credibility, was an essential characteristic of the prom- 
ised Messiah. And we hold him confessed that such was 
then the faith of Christians and the doctrine of the gospel. 

Jesus, indeed, did not come into the world and live among 
men in the manner that pagans would have looked for or ex- 
pected of a God ; and the circumstances of his life, and the 
very fact as well as the manner of his death, seemed, ac- 
cording to their knowledge and conceptions of the celestials, 
to afford abundant, matter for demonstrating that the " affairs 
of Jesus" were not the acts of a deity. Looking to the 
things that are seen and to the glory that must perish, they 
reasoned as if the thoughts of the Most High, the only living 
and true God, whom they knew not, were as their thoughts. 
And all that Celsus and his followers say of Jesus shows, 
as all Christians will admit, that he was not such a one as 
the gods of the heathens, and that he did not act among men 
as might have been expected of any of their number. 

The chief cities of the world were ever ready to contend 
for the glory of being the birthplace of a god or of a hero ; 
and despicable did it seem in the thoughts and by the words 
of Celsus that he who was called the Son of God w r as born 
in " a Jewish village !" And yet, out of a Jewish village, 
thus lightly esteemed and little among the thousands of Is- 
rael, was he to come forth, according to the word of the 
Lord by the prophets, whose goings forth had been of old 
even from everlasting. The words of the prophets are true 
to this hour ; and all the gods of the heathens, but in name, 
are forgotten. And we need but to be told of a Jewish vil- 
lage, however contemptuous the title may have seemed, as 
the place, exclusive of all others, where the Messiah was to 
be born. 

Celsus, as if unwilling that any vestige of worldly great- 
ness should in any way be attached to the history of Jesus, 
accuses the " composers of the genealogies of great extrava- 
gance in tracing his descent from the first man and from the 
Jewish kings, and he jestingly remarks on the ignorance of 
the carpenter's wife of her descent from the Jewish kings." 
P. 216. The genealogies are inserted in the gospels of Mat- 
thew and of Luke. And he not only speaks of composers 



232 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

in the plural number, as implying more than one, but, by 
speaking of the tracing of Christ's descent from the first 
man, he certifies specially his knowledge of the gospel by 
Luke, in which only the genealogy is carried up to Adam. 
And, in his false estimate of human greatness, little did he 
know that, in recording his scriptural and actual knowledge 
of the mean condition of the mother of Jesus, she whose 
humble lot was the subject of the jest, was not only to be 
honoured for many ages even in Rome and over the em- 
pire, more than any or than all of royal lineage ; but that, in 
kindred idolatry, she was to supplant that of the great god- 
dess Diana, else, had he known it, he might have been the 
first to fall down and worship, and, instead of railing at her 
lowly rank, adore her as " the Queen of Heaven." But 
Christianity was then uncorrupted, and he preferred idolatry 
to it. The descent of the carpenter's wife from the Jewish 
kings turns this jest of Celsus into a double testimony of the 
Messiahship of Jesus, who, though of the house and lineage of 
David, and a branch out of the stem of Jesse, grew up as a ten- 
der plant and as a root out of a dry ground. He was despised, 
and ice esteemed him not. 

Blinded by the god of this world, and looking only to the 
outward appearance, Celsus, as if not even deigning precisely 
to specify their number, states that Jesus, " taking to him- 
self ten or twelve abjects, vile publicans and sailors (or boat- 
men), went about with them, getting his subsistence in abase 
and shameful manner." P. 229. Thus did the proud spirit 
of man look on Jesus and his apostles, for as such we are at 
no loss to recognise these "abjects," Judas, as it were, being- 
struck out from the number. Whether they too had studied 
Plato, or by what magic arts they prevailed, or how a pom- 
pous paganism, upheld by all earthly power, and defended by 
philosophers, was soon laid in the dust before them, Celsus, 
perhaps purposely, has omitted to show. But he has told us 
of their condition, and that is enough to prove that the power 
was not of man, and that God did choose the foolish things 
of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of 
the world to confound the things that were mighty, and base 
things of the world, and things that were despised, to bring 
to naught things that were. Idolatry was brought to naught 
by the preaching of the apostles and their followers ; and no 
human wisdom or power was ascribed to them by their ene- 
mies, as they claimed none for themselves. 

Celsus admits that the reasons assigned by Christians for 
believing that Jesus was the Son of God, w r ere, that he had 
suffered for the destruction of the parent of evil, and because 
he healed the lame and the blind, and, as they said, raised 
the dead. But these reasons were in his opinion overruled 
by the mean condition in which Jesus appeared. And his 



ARGUMENTS OF CELSUS. 233 

reasonings from scriptural facts against the Divinity of 
Jesus lead him to accumulate the proofs that he was the 
very Christ, the promised Messiah that should come into the 
world, of whom all the prophets have spoken. And abun- 
dant illustrations, both of the antiquity and genuineness of 
the New Testament writings, having been adduced, the far- 
ther confirmation of the truth by his perverted reasoning 
may be succinctly noticed. 

The manner in which Jesus warned and threatened, say- 
ing, Wo unto you, I foretel unto you, is deemed unworthy 
of a god ; and assuredly, if the remonstrances of Jupiter had 
been disregarded like those of Jesus, they would, in the 
fancy of a heathen, have been followed by a thunderbolt. 
But had Celsus looked equally to all the words of Jesus, he 
would have known that he came not to destroy men's lives, 
but to save them. To prove that he was not the Word of 
God, Celsus had only, in his estimation, to know and to 
maintain that he was but a miserable man, condemned, 
scourged, and crucified. The cross of Christ, the hope and 
glory of believers, was an offence and a scandal not to be 
borne by a defender of idolatry. How, he argues, " could a 
God be betrayed and deserted by those who esteemed him a 
Saviour, and the Son and Messenger of the Most High God ] 
If a god, or a demon, or a wise man, would he not have 
avoided his sufferings if he had foreknown them ] Would 
he have been taken and executed 1 Would he have cried 
out, as impatient of thirst, and received the vinegar and gall 
to drink 1 Would he not at last, if not before, have deliv- 
ered himself from all his ignominy, and executed justice on 
his enemies, who reviled both him and his Father V 

We come not yet to speak of the character of Christ— if 
we dare speak of it at all — of itself Divine. But though we 
have borne with the calumniator for a moment, for the sake 
of the witness, and have seen how the memory of Jesus 
was mocked while the history of his life was traditionally 
new, yet we cannot adduce, even in support of our faith, the 
obloquy that was cast upon the meek, and lowly, and suffer- 
ing Jesus, even because such was his character and condi- 
tion on the earth, nor can we listen to the reasons given by 
an idolater, in an opposite spirit from that of the Roman 
centurion, to show that Jesus was not the Son of God, with- 
out asking this blasphemer of our Lord who or what were 
the gods which he worshipped, that he, the father of an evil 
progeny, should have sat as the self-constituted judge of the 
Messiahship or Divinity of Jesus. As to the former, he knew 
nothing ; for he believed not in the prophets of Israel, or in 
the God by whom they spake. And if any of his deities 
had been manifested in the flesh ; if such sensual beings had, 
even in fancv, needed to be incarnate, they might not in- 

V2 



234 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

deed have brooked the contumely which Jesus bore, nor 
have suffered as Jesus did, nor would they have gone about, 
to human appearance, in a mean and despicable manner : 
but would they have gone about continually doing good? 
would they have been holy, harmless, and undented \ or 
would they not rather, difficult as was the task, have out- 
matched men in wickedness as in power ] Would not a 
murderer have thereby better sustained the character of Ju- 
piter 1 Might not Hercules have been sought for in the chief 
of a ring 1 Would not a liar, with speed of foot, have been 
the very image of Mercury 1 And as a drunkard becomes 
fit for nothing, would not such a one, without any quality 
besides, have proved a perfect Bacchus I We go not over 
the catalogue of human crimes and of heathen gods, them- 
selves fashioned after the impure conceptions of deluded 
mortals who had changed the glory of God into a lie, but, in 
answering the charges against the humble and the holy 
Jesus, as the messenger of the God of heaven and the Me- 
diator between God and man, we cast back every foul re- 
proach uttered against him and his gospel, and, adopting the 
very principle of our adversary, we aver, that as Jesus did 
not live as any of the heathen deities would have done, so 
their gods are not as our Lord, our enemies themselves be- 
ing judges. But all who believe in Moses and the prophets 
must see that their railings against the meek, and lowly, and 
suffering Jesus are testimonials that he was the Messiah, 
who did not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in 
the streets, who did not break the bruised reed, nor quench the 
smoking flax ; but to whom the vinegar and gall were given, 
and who made his soul an offering for sin (Isa. xlii., 2, 3, liii.) 

The reasonings of Celsus are, in one essential respect, 
akin to those of Volney : a false inference is drawn alike by 
both from known and indisputed facts. In the one case as 
in the other, as has heretofore been shown, and as will here- 
after be seen, the facts, from which objections to the credi- 
bility of scripture are ingeniously but most falsely drawn, 
were the subjects of prophecy ; but more than this in the 
case of Celsus, they form also the very substance of the 
gospel. 

It is, we think, from the connexion which subsists be- 
tween the various parts of the Christian evidence that we 
may best deduce the great value and importance of the com- 
bined labours of our adversaries, while those of each are 
effective in their proper sphere. Volney and Celsus, divi- 
ding the prophecies alike, took their separate share in de- 
monstrating their completion. The former went to Judea 
and other countries of the East, and unwittingly fixed on the 
facts which the prophets had foretold, and from hence strove 
to show, by the power of reason, that no revelation of the 



ARGUMENTS OF CELSUS. 235 

Divine will had ever been given to man. Celsus, equally 
blind to what had been foretold, and ridiculing in the most 
contemptuous terms the question between Jews and Gen- 
tiles as to the coming of Christ, takes up the facts recorded 
in the New Testament, and thereby not only confirms their 
antiquity and genuineness as the Christian scriptures, but, 
as he thinks, for the confusion of believers, he also fixes 
chiefly and as unwittingly on those very things which the 
prophets had foretold ! These two great masfers, aided by 
kindred spirits, would seem to have conspired to divide be- 
tween them the great and connected portions of the Chris- 
tian evidence. Both reason wrongly from facts which they 
state correctly, and which illustrate the truth which they de- 
nied. The facts on which their reasonings rest are for us, 
but their arguments are against us. And we have another 
and a better witness than all. The spirit of prophecy, hav- 
ing preoccupied the ground which they have- respectively 
taken, maintains it even by their means, and makes use of 
their instrumentality to fix for ever the testimony of Jesus, 
wmere they strove to set up the stigma of reproach and the 
standard of rebellion against him. 

While Celsus denies the truth of many of the statements 
recorded in the gospel, and while his denial of these is in 
every instance a testimony of the genuineness of the Gos- 
pels as written by the disciples of Jesus, there are many 
facts which he not only explicitly admits, but the truth of 
which is directly and essentially implied in the arguments 
which he draws from them against the crecftoility of the 
scriptures ; and of these the details of the humiliation and 
sufferings of Christ form a prominent part in the work of 
Celsus and in the words of the prophets. After the same 
manner, of which we have seen abundant examples, Celsus 
animadverts so largely upon the writings of the Christians, 
referring exclusively to the New Testament Scriptures and 
chiefly to the Gospels, that about eighty references or quo- 
tations from the word of God, as Christians esteem the scrip- 
tures of the disciples of Jesus, are to be found in the first 
known work published against Christians, entitled the Word 
of Truth. A brief recapitulation of these may here be given, 
which refer to the humiliation and sufferings of Jesus, from 
which he affects to demonstrate that he was not the Son of 
God, but by which, as will afterward be seen, and as no 
Christian needs to be told, many express prophecies con- 
cerning the Messiah were fulfilled in Jesus. 

Jesus, the author of the new religion of the Christians, 
was a Jew (an Israelite of the tribe of Judah), and was born 
in a Jewish village. His mother, a poor woman, the wife 
of a carpenter, who at first disowned her, fled with him, for 



236 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

fear he should be put to death by Herod, into Egypt, where 
he learned the art of magic ; and if, on his returning from 
thence to Palestine, he did some wonderful works, others, 
according to the statement of Celsus, had done so likewise. 
He appeared openly as a preacher, but went about in a mean 
manner, wandering from place to place as a beggar, accom- 
panied by ten or eleven base publicans and sailors, or boat- 
men. So far from acting like a god (in the estimation of a 
worshipper of pagan deities), he did not exercise any author- 
ity, and, unable even to persuade men, he feebly warned and 
exhorted them. His very disciples deserted him ; he was 
denied by one and betrayed by another. He suffered him- 
self to be ignominiously taken, and bound, and scourged. He 
was condemned by a judge, and persecuted by the Jews. He 
was crowned with thorns, a reed was put in his hand, and 
he was arrayed in a scarlet robe. When he was led away 
to punishment, gall was given ,him. He was shamefully 
treated in the sight of the whole world, and crucified. But 
to the last he showed no sign of Divine power by destroying 
his enemies, nor did he take any vengeance upon them for 
all their insults and cruelties. He died as he had lived, a 
miserable man, and suffered till he died, as incapable of sa- 
ving himself; nor was he delivered in his last extremity by 
God, whom he had called his Father. 

Celsus, falling into the infatuation common to his tribe, by 
labouring in this the only method to which he could then 
betake himself to prove that Jesus was not the Son of God, 
has done all that a heathen could to supply the data for an 
opposite demonstration ; and it is chiefly because of this that, 
more than may seem meet, we have rested so long on his 
testimony. Though by averring that Jesus had learned ma- 
gic in Egypt, he might, in times of darkness to which his own 
mind was superior, evade the argument from miracles ; yet 
he derided the idea, and utterly denied the fact of the inspi- 
ration of the Jewish prophets ; and holding them as far infe- 
rior to the heathen oracles, it was not without scorn and in- 
dignation that he repelled the allegation of Christians that 
they had testified of Jesus. And, as a witness is questioned 
in a court of law, we have his own words, could the words 
of such a man be needed, to show how completely on this 
point, as on others, he is " purged of all partial counsel" on 
behalf of the cause which his testimony, so perversely to his 
principles, goes so directly to maintain. 

' ; The Pythian," exclaimed the indignant reasoner, " the 
Dodonaean, the Clarian, the Branchidian, the Ammonian or- 
acles, and many others, by whose directions colonies have 
been successfully planted all over the world, must pass for 
nothing ; but the obscure Jewish predictions, said or not said, 



ARGUMENTS OP CELSUS. 237 

the like to which are still practised in Phoenicia and Pales- 
tine, are thought to be wonderful and immutably certain."* 

Error vanishes as truth is seen, even as the light succeeds 
to the darkness which it dispels. Those oracles which of 
old overshadowed the world, are now known but in name, as 
having once existed to the delusion of mankind. But the burn- 
ing bush, which was first lighted up in the desert by the pres- 
ence of the Lord before his servant Moses, is not yet con- 
sumed ; and having cast its light to distant ages, its brilliancy 
is seen more resplendent than ever; and by its light we can 
look on the ruins of those cities from which the earliest col- 
onies went forth. And now, when we read how, as in the 
preceding paragraph, the lively oracles of the living God 
were contemptuously contrasted with those of the heathens, 
we see that the irony against the word of the Lord by the 
prophets is turned into truth. For we know that the Pyth- 
ian oracle, and all oracles besides, named or unnamed, must 
pass for nothing, and that the Jewish predictions are won- 
derful and immutably certain. And as one unbeliever has 
given us proof that such is the fact — even, we repeat it, im- 
mutably certain — were it not that we have still better wit- 
ness to be preferred before him in those disciples of Jesus 
whom he denominated abjects, we would seek nothing more 
conclusive than the arguments of another to show that these 
prophets, compared to whom all others must pass for nothing, 
testified of Jesus, and that he is the Christ, for the very rea- 
sons which Celsus so vehemently, and indecorously, and 
Jjlindly urged to prove that he was not the Son of God. 

" Oh that mine adversary had written a book, exclaimed 
the patient Job, surely I would take it upon my shoulder, and 
bind it as a crown to me."f And so precious to the Chris- 
tian is the first book that was written against his faith, scarce- 
ly yielding in importance or value to that of any other of the 
adversaries of our faith, precious, however pernicious for 
the time, as these also have often proved to be. 

The value of the arguments and objections of Celsus, in 
proving the antiquity and genuineness of the gospels, could 
not easily be overrated. " It appears here with an uncon- 
tested evidence, 1 ' to use the words of Leland, "by the tes- 
timony of one of the most malicious and virulent adversa- 
ries the Christian religion ever had, and who was also a man 
of considerable parts and learning, that the writings of the 
evangelists were extant in his time, which was in the next 
century to that in which the apostles lived ; and that those 
accounts were written by Christ's own disciples, and, conse- 
quently, that they were written in the very age in which the 
facts there related were done, and when, therefore, it would 

* Lard, vii., 250. t Job xxxi., 35, 36, 



238 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

have been the easiest thing in the world to have convicted 
them of falsehood if they had not been true." And, finally, 
to adopt also the words of Lardner, " We have in Celsus, in 
a manner, the whole history of Jesus, as recorded in the 
gospels. For we have traced in him the history of our Lord's 
birth, life, preaching, miracles, death, and resurrection, all as 
taken by him from the writings of Christ's own disciples. 
We have seen many testimonies to the antiquity and genu- 
ineness of our Scriptures. It was quite beside the intention 
of the author that we should derive any advantage from his 
work, so that we may here apply the words of Samson's rid- 
dle or enigma, out of the eater, or devourer, came meat, and 
out of the strong, or tierce, came sweetness"* 

The solution, as the origin of the riddle, in the first in- 
stance, was, that Samson, having turned aside to see the car- 
cass of a lion, found in it honey, which he took and ate. 
More loathsome of themselves than a putrid carcass are 
many abominable things, engendered by the corruption of the 
heart, which, from the beginning, have been uttered and writ- 
ten against that faith which alone can quicken those that are 
dead in trespasses and sins. But we may take of the honey 
without being tainted by the carcass; and we have found 
food out of the devourer, and sweetness out of the strong, to 
strengthen and refresh us in our progress, without turning 
aside from our path. Celsus was as a roaring lion in his 
day, as beseemed his calling. He boasted loudly, as if Chris- 
tianity should have perished by his efforts, and as if he should 
thus have been the last, as he is the first, in order of anti- 
Christian authors. But long before his time it had been 
written in the Old Testament Scriptures, " out of the mouths 
of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because 
of thine enemies, that thou mightst still the enemy and the 
avenger." Ps. viii., 2. And now, when pagan oracles have 
passed into oblivion, and when the books of the Jewish proph- 
ets and of the Christian Scriptures are every day held in 
the feeble hands of thousands and thousands of little chil- 
dren, strength is ordained to them to overmaster the ene- 
mies of our faith ; and there is not one among them, if well 
versant in the Scriptures, who, from the facts on which the 
arguments and objections of the first great opponent of Chris- 
tianity are founded, may not give a reason of his hope from 
the sufferings of Jesus, and a reason of his faith from the 
writings of the prophets, and in proof of a better strength than 
ever rested in an arm of flesh, still the enemy and the aven- 
ger, even by the words which he hath spoken. It needs not 
a Samson to approach the dead lion ; and out of the carcass, 
where it could little have been looked for, a child may now 

* Vol. vii., p. 268. 



ARGUMENTS OF CELSUS. 239 

take the honey and eat ; and while he finds it safely pre- 
served in the remains of an enemy, may relish the more the 
proof of the Messiahship of Jesus and of the genuineness of 
the Gospels, which, like the law of the Lord, are, to all who 
delight in them, sweeter than honey or the honeycomb. 

Having entered thus largely on the testimony of Celsus, 
as directly given or as drawn from his arguments against 
Christianity, it is less requisite to enlarge on that of those 
who, during the first centuries of our era, imitated his ex- 
ample, and thus added at once to the number of the adver- 
saries of the gospel, and of the witnesses on its behalf. 
Though wise in their own eyes and in the estimation of the 
world, little did they wot that they were striving against him 
of whose power the words of the king in the parable, who 
says of all who opposed him and who would not have him 
to reign over them, were truly a symbol, of the significaney 
of which they would be examples, " Where are these mine 
enemies 1 bring them forth and slay them before me." Hu- 
man wisdom, with tokens of their right, they claimed as 
their own. Human power was on their side, as much blood 
of the Christians testified. But there was a moral power 
which they could not resist or withstand : and Christianity 
prevailed, though the wisdom of the wise and the power of 
the highest upon the earth were combined against it, and 
eventually united in the same person (Julian). And re-echo- 
ing the words of the author of our faith, and trusting in the 
strength of the cause which is his, and which he ever will 
maintain as his own, we may fearlessly ask, Where are 
these our enemies 1 They may be brought to the trial, that 
we may see whether, pursuing the course, they also share 
the fate of their predecessor and pattern, who first dared to 
take the words of the gospel as the weapons of his infidel 
warfare. 



SECTION II. 

Many adversaries, indeed, rose up against the Christians, 
who manifested their hostility by acts of violence : and there 
is no want of testimony to the hatred in which Uiey were 
held, to the obloquy with which they were treated, to the 
sufferings which they endured, or to the patience, termed 
obstinacy, with which, as beseemed Christians, they did bear 
all things. But while kings and rulers took counsel against 
them, and the lawless outrages of the mob needed to be re- 
strained, and satirists and moralists sneered at their princi- 
ples, even when they could not withhold assent to their vir- 
tues, few took up the more perilous task of meeting them on 



240 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

the fair field of argument, open as it then was to all but 
Christians alone. And, though persecution followed on per- 
secution, about a century elapsed till another celebrated 
champion, like Celsus, and one more able than he, took up 
the controversy anew, and made another stand for establish- 
ed error against conflicting truth. 

Though the earliest, as well as some of the latest, of our 
opponents give us proofs such as we would desire, and though 
we have no reason to rejoice for the truth's sake that their 
number is so few, yet it would seem to be a strange argu- 
ment, against the veracity of any book that the statements 
which it contains — especially if so notorious that their truth 
might easily have been searched out, and so influential as 
to " turn the w T orld upside down" — had been seldom contro- 
verted, at a time when, if untrue, they could most easily have 
been disproved ; or that its genuineness should be denied, 
for the reason that it never once was then challenged. It 
might here behoove our adversaries to bring forth their wit- 
nesses to testify against us if they could ; and it were no 
less unjust now to demand of Christians a host of witnesses 
against them in the early ages, who are not known to have 
ever existed, than it was at that period to torture believers 
in order to extort from them the confession of crimes which 
they never knew. Yet such is the varied manifestation of 
the same spirit of opposition to the gospel of Jesus, that the 
want of testimony from among the heathen has, though even 
that be false, been charged against us. And while we here 
look in vain throughout a century for argumentative oppo- 
nents, though not destitute of other involuntary witnesses, a 
word or two may be dropped on the subject of the alleged 
scantiness of heathen testimony. 

Neither the number of writers nor the facilities of author- 
ship were then so great as they are now ; and of the works 
that were written in the first centuries of our era, many have 
been lost, and others, still extant, are incomplete. And among 
those that have come down to us, it is scarcely reasonable 
to expect that a historian treating on one subject should 
have written on another. There were besides, at that time, 
peculiar reasons, as every reader may well conceive, why 
Christianity was a theme rather to be shunned, if in the way, 
than sought for, if out of it. 

Christianity is now the professed religion of the civilized 
world ; and, however corrupted, its history has long been 
intermingled with that of many nations. But it presented a 
different aspect in a w r orldly view, while the kings of the 
earth set themselves against it, and while it was slighted as 
a novelty, derided as foolishness, and branded by pagans as 
impious. Though the heathen oracles had not become 
dumb, there would have been none to tell the Epicurean and 



ARGUMENTS OF PORPHYRV. 241 

Stoic philosophers, but those from whom they would not 
iearn, that the little rill, which they had seen springing from 
a region that was barren to their view, would in future ages, 
to use the language of prophecy, become a " great river, 
whose streams make glad the city of our God ;" and few but 
the faithful in Jesus traced its progress, as none but they 
drank of its living waters. It pertained to unbelievers only 
to mark its course, and, if they could, to check its current ; 
and to the one they were as little inclined as they w r ere un- 
able to execute the other. Christianity was hateful, if not 
despicable, in their view ; and as it did not possess attrac- 
tions for the children of this world, their fears alone induced 
them to regard ov aroused them to resist it. The progress 
of the gospel tin Aighout the world was not a choice theme 
for those who loved to trace the march of earthly conquer- 
ors, or to celebrate the praises of the gods of the heathens. 
One historian, lauding his office, might question whether the 
man who wrote of noble deeds, or the man who achieved 
them, was the more illustrious ; and another might boast of 
his service to the commonwealth by writing the history of 
his country, and perpetuating the glory of the Roman name. 
But while Greece retained its speculation, and the imperial 
city had not been cured of its pride, what unconverted Gen- 
tile, aspiring to the office of historian, would have taken up 
the task of recording the acts of the hated Christians, or of 
detailing the progress of that new religion, which the prince 
of historians had stigmatized as a detestable superstition ! 
Christianity is so little beholden to the wisdom or the power 
of man for its primary success, that, as in the case of Epic- 
tetus, heathen authors would seem to have sometimes pur- 
posely withheld any allusion to facts, of which we know 
that they could not have been ignorant, as if, on their part, 
the mere notice of the gospel would have been an act of 
condescension, and the very name of Christians more than 
they would mention. The silence of those who, notwith- 
standing, gave ample manifestation of a hostile spirit to- 
wards the cause of Jesus, instead of being derogatory to 
Christianity or militating against its truth, may, with some- 
what greater propriety and reason, be construed into an ad- 
mission that they had nothing to say against it ; for assu- 
redly, if they had, such a strange matter of complaint would 
never have existed. 

If, on the other hand, there were some or any of the 
heathen writers who, in the pure love of historical truth, 
would, if they had ventured to touch on such a theme, have 
given a fair representation of Christianity and of its prog- 
ress, there were other reasons for their silence not less in- 
fluential. From them, if such existed, it were vain to look 
for an approval of Christian principles ; for whenever the 

A. 



242 APPROPRIATION OP THE 

learned adopted these, they were transformed into the order 
of Christian writers, at a time when to write in behalf of 
Christianity was to be ready for the stake ; and, instead of 
their testimony being thereby enfeebled, it was surely en- 
hanced as greatly as their sincerity was tried by martyrdom. 
But all who looked not for such a crown, but for fading lau- 
rels in its stead, were sparing of their words as they were 
careful of their life ; and testimony to Christianity could not 
then be looked for but from those who were willing to lay 
down their lives for its sake. Now that imperial edicts are 
at best but interesting and useful documents, and when the 
cry of the " Christians to the lions" has ceased, and no howl- 
ing for its prey is heard from a wild beast, nor is there any 
pile to ascend, nor a red-hot iron chair on which to sit, it is 
easy to say that such a one should have written this or that 
concerning Christianity ; but it was not so safe or easy then, 
when any direct testimony corroborative of the faith of Je- 
sus was watched with jealousy, and might at any moment 
have met with death, in its most appalling forms. If history 
has had its martyrs, they have been slain with the pen : but 
one needed to be a believer as well as a historian to take up 
the defence of a cause so persecuted, and to brave the ter- 
rors of Christian martyrdom, or even to risk the possible im- 
putation of so dangerous a name. 

" After all," to use the words of Dr. Lardner, " we have 
seen a goodly catalogue of heathen writers in the first and 
second century, men of great eminence for their wit and 
learning, their high stations and credit in the world, who 
have, in their way, borne testimony to Jesus Christ and the 
things concerning him, and to the Christians, his disciples 
and followers, their numbers, their principles, their manners, 
and their fortitude and patience under heavy sufferings, and a 
great variety of difficulties and discouragements which they 
met with for the profession of what they were persuaded 
to be the truth. And Celsus, who in this period wrote against 
the Christians, has borne a large testimony to the books of 
the New Testament and to the history of our Saviour."* 

The testimony of heathen writers, if not superabundant, 
is sufficient ; that of Christians is ample and uninterrupted : 
and the utmost, we think, that, in the conclusion of this to- 
pic, our enemies could demand, is to show that, besides Cel- 
sus, there were other watchful and quicksighted foes as any 
among them, willing, ready, and able to detect and expose 
any such duplicity, if such had been practised by the disciples 
or followers of Jesus. Such men, rising one after another, 
well fitted for such an office, and bent with all their souls 
on executing it, were Celsus, Porphyry, Hierocles, and Julian. 

*Lardner's Credibility, vol. vii., p. 307. 



ARGUMENTS OF PORPHYRY. 243 

Unable to assail Christianity by facts, they attempted to over- 
throw it by arguments. And from what we clearly know 
of them, though a great part of their labours has perished, 
we may at least leave it to their subtilty and enmity to show 
that, if there had been any deception, they were the men to 
detect it ; and that, if the origin of Christianity, as detailed in 
the New Testament, had not been undoubted and unimpeach- 
able, they, of all in the world, were not the men to have ac- 
knowledged it. 

Porphyry, a learned heathen, who was the author of nu- 
merous works, wrote a large treatise in fifteen books against 
the Christians, only some fragments of which remain. It 
was for a long time in high repute among the Gentiles, and, 
exclusive of works that remain, in which his arguments are 
quoted in order to their refutation, several books were writ- 
ten iii answer to it, which are now lost. Occasional refer- 
ences to Christianity, breathing the same hostile spirit, are 
to be found in those of his works which are still extant. 
And his arguments are repeatedly referred to by different 
subsequent writers. He was the ablest and one of the most 
inveterate enemies of Christianity, and the terms " the im- 
pious" or " blasphemous" were generally prefixed by Chris- 
tian writers to his name. It is admitted not only that hea- 
thens were confirmed in their hostility to the gospel, but that 
the faith of many Christians was shaken by his writings. 
Subtle as he was in argument, and skilled in historical learn- 
ing, it was no easy matter at that time to detect his sophistry, 
or to expose the fallacy of arguments with which Christians 
have had to grapple anew in modern times. 

Denying the inspiration of the prophecies of the Old Tes- 
tament, and combating the evidence which Christians drew 
from them, especially from the prophecies of Daniel, which 
speak so explicitly of the coming of the Messiah, he found 
no other subterfuge but to deny the genuineness of the book 
of Daniel : and he set himself with all his art to show that 
it was not written by its professed author, but at a period 
long subsequent to his time. With such ability did he assail 
its genuineness, and with such subtlety did he search out 
every semblance of a reason to overthrow it, that not only 
did one voluminous answer succeed to another in the early 
ages, but the attention of Christians has been kept alive, age 
after age, to the objections which he raised, and which infi- 
dels in the last century renewed. Though, if his wilful ig- 
norance be not impeached, the candour of Porphyry must be 
left without defence, because he sought to identify the his- 
tory of Susannah, which never had a place in the Jewish 
canon, with the book of Daniel, in order that, thus attacked, 
they might fall together, as falsely bearing the name of that 
prophet ; and yet his clear detection of the spuriousness of 



244 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

the apocryphal production, from a few Greek words or deri- 
vations which showed that it was the composition of a later 
age, gives ample proof of his quicksighted discernment, and 
that nothing was wanting on his part to detect any decep- 
tion wherever it could be found, and by the use of every 
possible means, whether right or wrong, to strip the Chris- 
tian cause of any evidence which he could attempt with 
whatever violence to tear away. The warning which he has 
given ought not to be lost on Christians ; that human com- 
positions should never be associated, or joined as a part, with 
the sacred oracles, and that a wide distinction should be ever 
made, and an impassable barrier ever stand, between the 
word of man and that which has God for its author. And 
while an act of Porphyry may thus instruct men in the 
present day that such an example should be shunned as sin, 
more direct benefit is derived from his attack on the book of 
Daniel, as it is received in its original and uncontaminated 
form by Jews and by Protestants. For as that book defied 
him to find in it a flaw such as he had discovered in the spu- 
rious legend, he strove iri another manner to bring down its 
date, and laboriously traced out the extreme precision and 
distinctness with which the history of the kings of Syria and 
Egypt was detailed, down to the days of Antiochus Epipha- 
nes, inferring from hence that it was drawn from the actual 
facts, and written subsequently to their fulfilment, and that, 
down to that period, the professed prophecy was a real his- 
tory. Thus, according to the fate of the enemies of the 
truth, were his own feet taken in the snare which he laid, 
and the learning of Porphyry was applied to the illustration 
of the perfect truth of the prophecy. 

As to the design to defraud Jesus of the testimony of the 
prophets in the manner which Porphyry attempted, it may 
be enough to say that the fulfilment of prophecy has proved 
to be as strictly and literally true since the days of Porphyry, 
as before the days of Antiochus Epiphanes ; and his argu- 
ments, which were thought so available then, would be totally 
irrelevant now. The prophets were not the copyists of his- 
torians ; but historians, from the days of Herodotus down- 
ward, have necessarily and unconsciously been the copyists 
of the prophets ; and in nothing have the prophecies been 
more clearly read anew than in the discoveries of modern 
travellers. And were the assumptions of Porphyry now to 
be maintained, and his mode of evading the testimony of the 
prophets renewed, and his argument followed out, as he la- 
boured hard and in vain to make it good nearly sixteen cen- 
turies ago, it would need more talent and effrontery than his 
own to show that the writings known by the names of Isaiah, 
Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, and all the rest of the prophets, 
were not written by any of those whose names they bear, nor 



ARGUMENTS OF PORPHYRY. 245 

by any Jews of old, nor by any man long after the days of 
Porphyry; but are mere emanations of yesterday, copied 
partly from Gibbon and Volney, and only dreamed of as exist- 
ing before the present century, since the beginning of which 
many of the facts have been discovered which they professed 
to foretel. 

However great would be the hardihood, or however gross 
the ignorance, which gainsayers would display by reasoning 
in the present day against the inspiration of the scriptures 
after the manner of Porphyry, yet no task can be easier than 
to draw a plain inference from his attempt to disprove the 
genuineness of the book of Daniel, and his arguing on the 
assumed genuineness of the New Testament Scriptures. It 
is certain that he searched them carefully. He sought, from 
the various reading of a verse or of a word, to detect any in- 
consistency or error. He accused the evangelists of magni- 
fying the miracle of Jesus walking on the waters, by having 
called the Lake of Genesareth a sea (which was merely a He- 
brew mode of expression, and was the language of Judea, 
though not of Italy). He accused the apostles of abusing the 
simplicity and ignorance of their hearers; and this judge of 
those who shall be. the judges of Israel, censured Peter be- 
cause he imprecated death on Ananias and Sapphira; and he 
also censured Paul because he withstood Peter; and from 
hence he would infer that they acted on different principles 
and taught a different doctrine ; seeking thereby to overthrow 
the faith of those who rested on the foundation of the apos- 
tles as well as of the prophets. But while he thus sought to 
disparage the New Testament, and to cast a stigma on the 
first teachers of the gospel, and, in the words of those who 
^defended it, " poured out many blasphemous words upon texts 
of scripture," it is obvious, from the very adoption of such a 
mode of attack, that the weapon which he had so successfully 
used against an apocryphal writing was wholly powerless 
against the gospel of Jesus, and could not, in the days of Por- 
phyry, be lifted up against it. He could prove that the history 
of Susannah was not written by Daniel, as is falsely pretend- 
ed. But he could not attempt to prove that the writings of 
the New Testament were not written by the disciples of Je- 
sus. He took the words of the author of the Christian faith, 
as Celsus had done a century before him, as they are record- 
ed in the Gospels; and the New Testament, as forming the 
Christian writings, was the object of his attack; and every 
argument which he drew from them was an implied admis- 
sion or acknowledgment of their genuineness ; for he could 
not charge against the evangelists and apostles any word or 
writing that lay under any suspicion of having been written 
by others. If he could have adduced such a charge, we may 
be sure that he would not have withheld it. A hundred and 

X 2 



246 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

forty years had scarcely elapsed from the time that the last 
of the Gospels was written, or the canon of the New Testa- 
ment completed, till the birth of Porphyry. And if aught, 
at that early period in which he lived, could have been found 
to militate even in appearance against their genuineness — 
even the form of an expression or the derivation of a word — 
which he knew so well how to turn to account, he would 
have sought it out, and triumphed in the use of it, if he could 
thereby have been borne out in the semblance of a plausible 
proof that any portion of the scriptures of the New Testa- 
ment was not written by the man whose name it bore, or if 
it had not come directly to the Christians from the hands 
of a disciple or an apostle of Jesus. Had it been possible for 
him even to bring forward such a charge, he would not have 
needed to have gone back to the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, 
nor to have expended his labour in the incongruous offices of 
expounding the book of Daniel, and exposing the spurious- 
ness of the history of Susannah. And if he could have sub- 
stantiated it, the task which he undertook would have been 
executed to infinitely better purpose by one plain argument, 
which would have superseded the necessity of all his labours ; 
and the means of accomplishing it, if such had existed, must 
have been then within his reach and comparatively at hand. 
It is not to be credited that he would have drawn his reason- 
ings from the Scriptures, or from the facts on which Chris- 
tianity is founded, if he could either have disproved their 
genuineness or denied the facts. Had he even attempted thus 
to impugn the Christian writings, the attack and the defence 
of the Book of Daniel would alike have been unheard of till 
the gospel had been here cleared of every shadow of impu- 
tation against it. 

As it is now easy for men to say what, according to their 
fancy, heathen historians should have related concerning 
Christianity at a time when, if they had reported facts with 
faithfulness, the act might have been the warrant for their 
execution ; so it is easy for skeptics in modern times to deny 
the genuineness of the New Testament, and to assert, in 
hopes of being believed by those who know nothing of the 
matter, that it was not known or recognised as the rule of 
Christian faith till the fourth, or, if they choose with equal 
truth to affirm, till the fourteenth century ; but it was not so 
safe or so easy to hazard such an assertion in the second 
century, when Celsus sought to confute Christians from their 
scriptures, nor in the third, when Porphyry followed his 
example. But while the traditions handed down from the 
apostles were yet new and universal ; while the scriptures 
were read publicly in the assemblies of believers, and the 
original writings, each of which had been committed to a 
]x)dy of men constituting a church, and had been transcribed 



ARGUMENTS OF PORPHYRY. 247 

and transmitted to all the churches, and which were carried 
about by the preachers of the gospel, were appealed to, even 
as they now are. in the works of every Christian author ; 
and while the disciples of Jesus, forming a vast multitude, 
were everywhere ready to testify of their faith in them to 
the death, and many were actually giving up their lives in 
testimony of the truth which they contained, a Dioclesian 
might command the scriptures to be burned, but their genu- 
ineness was not to be denied by as bitter and as able ene- 
mies of our faith as ever lived. 

It may be meet that we give an example of the reasoning 
of Porphyry, and of the manner in which he founded it on 
the words of Jesus, and counted them as such, with all the 
confidence with which a Christian, for other purposes, would 
now adduce them as the words of his Lord and Master : 

" If Christ (as he says) be the way of salvation, the truth, 
and the life (John xiv., 6), and they only who believe in him 
can be saved, what became of the men who lived before 
his coming V " How came it to pass that the gracious and 
merciful God should suffer all nations, from Adam to Moses 
and from Moses to the coming of Christ, to perish through 
ignorance of his laws and commands 1 forasmuch as nei- 
ther Britain, fruitful of tyrants, nor the Scottish nation, nor 
the barbarous people all around, were acquainted with Mo- 
ses and the prophets. What necessity, therefore, was there 
that he should come in the end of the world, and not till 
after an innumerable multitude of men had perished ]"* 

We wash not to state objections, even while adduced as 
proofs, without some slight hint at an answer, though we 
should thereby Le drawn aside from the straight course, and 
the progress of our argument be seemingly suspended. And 
for the honour of our faith, and in the name of our country 
(though far from its shores as we write), we may here, once 
again, pause for a moment to say that the Scottish nation is 
not numbered now among barbarous people, because, through 
the blessing of God, Scotland is a land of Bibles, and that 
book is the rule of their faith, of which infidels have ever 
sought to deprive and to bereave them ; that such in that 
land, though not straitened to it alone, but freely offered 
unto all, and experienced in many more, is the efficacy of 
the gospel of Jesus in elevating the intellect, even though 
high and vain imaginations should be cast down ; that there 
are thousands of her sons, so nurtured in the knowledge of 
Moses and the prophets, of Christ and his apostles, that, in 
defence of the gospel, they would not fear to cope with the 
ablest heathen that ever assailed our faith. And there is 
many a Scottish peasant who would question the wisdom no 

* Lardner, vol. vii., p. 438, 439. 



248 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

less than the humility of the man who turns the savour of 
life into the savour of death, and rejects Him who is the 
way, the truth, and the life, for the reason that God giveth 
not account of his matters unto him as he might think fit to 
require ; and who, looking to scripture, would here have a 
ready answer, that the Lord of all the earth will do right; 
that the times of ignorance which God winked at are past ; 
and that, as they who have sinned without law shall perish 
without law, they who have sinned in the law shall be judged 
by the law ; and that, in the righteous judgments which he 
will execute upon all, it will be more tolerable for Sodom 
and Gomorrah, and for the most barbarous people that ever 
dwelt on earth, than for those who bring upon themselves 
the greater condemnation of loving the darkness rather than 
the light. The very text which our adversary quoted, in 
confutation of other adversaries now, would not be given up 
by any who look to Jesus for salvation, when the judgment 
cometh, for all the famed philosophy of Greece and Rome, 
in which neither the way, the truth, nor the life were to be 
found. And none can be at a loss to tell that, while his 
words are a witness against himself, they are a witness also 
for the genuineness of the scriptures, and that such as we 
now read them were the words of Jesus, according to the 
testimony of an enemy, and in fulfilment of the testimony 
of the prophets, " Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends 
of the earth" Jesus came at the appointed and predicted 
time, and twenty-five centuries ago it was said, The isles 
shall iv ait for his law* 

It may be only farther requisite to give, in the most suc- 
cinct form, a summary view of the testimony drawn from 
Porphyry, as may best and most explicitly be done in the 
words of Lardner, from whose able and decisive work we 
have so often quoted. 

" Porphyry was a man of great abilities. His objections 
against Christianity were in esteem with Gentile people for 
a long while. His enmity to the Christians and their prin- 
ciples was very great. Nevertheless, from the remaining 
fragments of his work against the Christians, and from his 
other writings, we may reap no small benefit. It manifestly 
appears that he was well acquainted with the Scriptures of 
the Old and New Testament ; for we have had before us 
many of his objections against the book of Daniel. We 
have observed plain references to the gospels of Matthew, 
Mark, and John, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistle 
to the Galatians ; and, in his remarks upon that epistle, 
probably references to others of St. Paul's epistles. There 
can be no question made that, in his work against the Chris- 
tians, many other books of the New Testament were quoted 
* Isaiah xlv., 22. Ibid, xlii , 4. 



ARGUMENTS OF PORPHYRY. 249 

or referred to by him. In a fragment of his work against 
the Christians, he has this expression : c And now people 
wonder that this distemper has oppressed the city so many 
years, iEsculapius and the other gods no longer conversing 
with men ; for since Jesus has been honoured, none have 
received any benefit from the gods.' And in his life of Plo- 
tinus he says that there were ' many Christians.' (Vol. viii., 
p. 158.) It is well that, in the remaining fragment of his 
work against the Christians, we have evidences of so many 
references to them as there are. But it may be remem- 
bered that Jerome, who seems to have had the whole work 
before him, said, ' That if because of Porphyry's blasphe- 
mies another Cephas must be invented, lest Peter should be 
thought to have erred, innumerable passages must be struck 
out of the Divine Scriptures, which he has found fault with 
because he did not understand them.' The places of scrip- 
ture, therefore, which Porphyry had remarked upon, were 
very numerous. Theodoret observes that Porphyry read 
the scriptures very carefully when he was composing his 
work against us." 

It is not necessary that we should know what were the 
innumerable or very numerous passages of scripture on 
which Porphyry animadverted. It is enough that -he ani- 
madverted upon any in the manner which he did, and that we 
have so many examples of his reasonings out of the scrip- 
tures ; we need nothing more to show us the spirit and the 
talent of the man, and his enmity against the Christian cause. 
A few quotations from a book, and a few arguments against 
the doctrines it contains, and animadversions against those 
who wrote it, are as good as thousands, to establish at once 
its antiquity and genuineness ; and there could not have been 
a fitter person for that purpose than the celebrated and re- 
doubted Porphyry. More than this we need not ask ; for a 
multiplicity of such arguments would scarcely have increas- 
ed our proofs. Many of them are unknown ; but, while per- 
fectly fearless of them, though they were innumerable and 
though they existed still, we know that every knee shall 
bow to Jesus, and that " blasphemi-es" against his holy name 
shall not be eternal upon earth ; and we cannot lament that 
the fate which awaits them all is already seen in many of 
those of Porphyry which have perished. 

Of Hierocles, his next successor in the same office, with 
the exception of one of unknown name, whose work, though 
large, is now lost, it may suffice to show how well he has 
executed his part in fulfilling it to sum up his labours in two 
or three sentences, made ready to our hands by one than 
whom, on this subject, none was ever more laborious in ad- 
ducing testimony, or scrupulous in scanning it.* 

* Lardner's Works, vol. vii., p, 437 ; vol. viii., p. 158. 



250 APPROPRIATION OP THE 

" About the beginning of Dioclesian's persecution, another 
work was written against the Christians, in two books, by 
Hierocles, a man of learning, and a person of authority and 
influence as a magistrate. He was well acquainted with our 
Scriptures, and made many objections against them, thereby 
bearing testimony to their antiquity, and to the great respect 
which was shown them by the Christians ; for he has refer- 
red to both parts of the New Testament, the Gospels and the 
Epistles. He mentions Peter and Paul by name, and casts 
reflections upon them. He did not deny the truth of our 
Saviour's miracles ; but in order to overthrow the arguments 
which the Christians formed from them in proof of our Sav- 
iour's Divine authority and mission, he set up Apollonius 
Tyanaeus as a rival or superior to him. But it was a vain 
attempt."* 



SECTION III. 

To add to such conclusive testimony, is only to redouble 
proofs. There are superabundant reasons to satisfy the full 
demands of all reasonable men, and to clear the subject of 
all difficulty and doubt in the eyes of every man who seeks 
for knowledge in the love of truth. But to pretend by argu- 
ments however strong, and facts however plain, to convince 
those who are hardened in unbelief, and who desire not the 
knowledge of the ways of the Lord or of the truth of his 
word, were to abandon all just pretensions to reason, and 
daringly to assume the prerogative of the Spirit. Skeptics, 
gainsaying the verdict of our enemies in our favour, may not 
be satisfied with the testimony and the decision even of 
skeptics like themselves. To the arguments of Celsus, Por- 
phyry, and Hierocles, they cannot well object, seeing that 
they have been the cant of their own caste from generation 
to generation. But the world, they say, is grown wiser than 
it was, and the age of reason is come at last. And wise as 
these men were, and much as they have profited by their 
wisdom, yet had they lived in the days of these their fathers, 
at a time when the genuineness of the New Testament might 
have been tried by live tradition and by the original writings, 
they would have discovered some ground for alleging what, 
unhappily, they can now only maintain without reason and 
assert without proof. Wise as even Porphyry was, who 
wrote many books and searched many more, they, in their 
own eyes, are wiser still, and they would have discovered 
gome flaw in the record which he could not find : they, at 

* Lardner, vol. viii., p. 158, 159. • 



ARGUMENTS OF JULIAN. 251 

the proper time for finding it, would have discovered some- 
thing — neither they nor we can tell what the great discovery- 
might have been — which from Porphyry's blindness is now 
for ever lost, or they would have filched out some secret 
testimony from the Christians which none else could find, 
and their wisdom would have achieved what the rack could 
not accomplish. Before such modest assurance, whether 
avowed or implied, all the powers of reason and of reason- 
ing must fail. But, even if such assertions could be listened 
to, or if there were one last and little inlet for conviction to 
their minds, a witness, if they sought one, there is, accord- 
ing to their own heart, who might wholly remove every re- 
maining scruple, and effectually confirm the testimony, if not 
previously complete. 

Julian the apostate is a well-known name. His imme- 
diate predecessors in the imperial throne, Constantine the 
Great and Constantius, had renounced paganism and pro- 
fessed Christianity, the faith from which Julian afterward 
apostatized. In his youth he was trained up for an office in 
the church ; " he was admitted to the inferior offices of the 
ecclesiastical order, and publicly read the scriptures in the 
Church of Nicomedia."* But the spirit of the world pre- 
vailed in his mind over the spirit of faith. Grecian literature 
had charms for him such as he could not find in the sim- 
plicity of the gospel. And the young aspiring prince, fas- 
cinated with the reputed and recorded deeds of gods and of 
heroes, would not, though reading the scriptures to others, 
be himself taught to follow the meek and lowly Jesus ; and, 
reversing the choice of his uncle Constantine, he chose his 
place at the head of an army rather than on the bench of a 
synod. But having been initiated in the church and trained 
up in the order of the clergy, the means of investigation as 
to the genuineness of the Scriptures were open to him as 
they could be to any ; and as emperor, he held the archives 4 
of the empire in his hands to which the Christian apologists 
had repeatedly appealed. He was gifted, besides, with no 
mean talents ; and from the large number of his writings 
within a short period, it is apparent that his pen was that of 
a ready writer. Surely, therefore, in every view, none was 
better able than he, if all the ability of man had not been 
powerless, to take up the controversy against the Christians, 
and to vindicate, if he could, the honour of the gods to whom 
he was devoted, and his own apostacy which he was zeal- 
ous to defend. Having changed from Christianity to pagan- 
ism, and from being a public reader of the Scriptures to be 
still more publicly a reasoner against them, the testimony of 
Julian may be associated, in some degree, with that of Ju- 

* Gibbon's History, vol. iv., 65. 



252 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

das ; and the apostate may stand up beside the traitor to tell 
if there was any secret among Christians concealed from the 
world, and to show whether either of them can disclose 
aught against the master whom he betrayed or the faith 
which he abjured. Of all cases that could possibly be put, 
these, perhaps, should in evidence be the strongest, since the 
proof came from their own lips of the genuineness of the 
gospel, as well as of the innocence of Jesus. It was not for 
the one or for the other of this hapless pair to have con- 
cealed anything which they could have disclosed against Je- 
sus and his cause, or to have admitted anything on behalf of 
the gospel which it was possible for them to have denied. 

Many edicts, letters, and orations of Julian are still extant, 
in which there are manifest and express references to Chris- 
tians and their affairs, and repeated allusions to the Scriptures. 
They were not only restrained from teaching any of the 
branches of polite literature, but their children were prohib- 
ited from attending the schools where it was taught. * In a 
letter to Hecabolus, supposed to have been the chief magis- 
trate of Edessa, after the profession of much clemency and 
moderation towards the Christians, it is added and ordained, 
in order to facilitate and aid their design of entering into the 
kingdom of heaven, " since they are so commanded by their 
most wonderful law,"f that all the money of the church of 
Edessa should be taken away and given to the soldiers, and 
that their estates should be added to the imperial dominions,! 
thereby illustrating the prophecy that they should be spoiled 
many days. On the murder of George, bishop of Alexandria, 
the emperor was not slack in writing to the governor of 
Egypt to seize on his large and excellent library, and to de- 
stroy utterly all the Christian writings ; and the treasurer of 
Egypt was addressed on the same subject, after the same 
manner. § In a letter to the Alexandrians, sentence of ban- 
ishment was denounced on Athanasius, the former bishop ; 
and on their petition that the order should be recalled, Julian, 
in a second letter, appealing from their faith to their pride, de 
clares, by the gods, that he was ashamed that any Alexan- 
drian should acknowledge himself to be a Galilean. And re- 
ferring to one passage of scripture after another, he accuses 
them of not worshipping the gods whom Alexander theii 
founder, and the Ptolemies, and other great princes of Egypt 
had honoured, but Jesus, whom their fathers never saw, and 
whom they accounted God the Word. (John i.) He holds 
forth before them his own apostate example. But, if neglect- 
ing such patterns, they would " still follow the instruction 

* Juliani Caesares, Ep. 42., p. 422-4 ; quoted by Lardner, vol. vii., p. 51)8, 
639, 640. 

f Matthew v., 3 ; Luke vi., 20 ; Matthew xix., 21. 

% Ep. 43, p. 424. Lardner, ibid., p. 641. 6 Ibid., p. 642. 



ARGUMENTS OF JULIAN, 253 

and superstition of knavish men," there were disciples enough 
of Athanasius to please their "itching ears." (2 Tim. iv., 3.) 
And as many, according to the sure word of prophecy, were 
instructed by the suffering teachers, he concludes by lament- 
ing that there were among them a '* multitude of such peo- 
ple" besides Athanasius and his followers, and by banishing 
him not only out of Alexandria, as before, but out of all 
Egypt. 

Other letters still more threatening followed ; and swear- 
ing by the great Serapis, declaring, as better suited to such 
an oath than to the faith which he had renounced, that, though 
backward to condemn, he was afterward more backward to 
forgive ; and expressing his extreme concern that all the gods 
were despised, he sought no service of the praefect of Egypt 
like that of expelling the wicked Athanasius, " the enemy of 
the gods," who thinned still more the ranks of paganism by 
converting Greeks to the Christian faith. In a letter to Ar- 
sacius, the (pagan) high-priest of Galatia, he attributes the 
decline of paganism to the fault of its professors ; and, as if 
he had not altogether forgotten in practice some Christian 
lessons, he strives to provoke the very priests of paganism 
to good works from the example of the believers in Jesus. 
In strange discrepance between cause and effect, he chiefly 
attributes " the augmentation of impiety" to that humanity 
to strangers and sanctity of life of which Christians made 
such a show. Forgetful of motives more effectual than im- 
perial mandates, he enjoins that all the priests of the ancient 
religion should not only be persuaded, but compelled, to live 
soberly ; but though they were thus to take Christians for 
their pattern, they were strictly to forbear from the contam- 
ination of their conversation or company. Not to be out- 
done by them in liberality, he commands that hospitals be 
erected in every city, and that they should be open, without 
exception, to all. " For it is a shame," says he, u when there 
are no beggars among the Jews, and the impious Galileans 
relieve not only their own people, but ours also, that our poor 
should be neglected by us, and be left helpless and destitute." 
And to the same purport, in an oration, he accused the impi- 
ous Galileans of providing for the poor, whom their own 
priests had neglected, a species of humanity to which they 
were addicted, thereby recommending the worst of things by 
an exhibition of their liberality. " For beginning with their 
love-feasts and \ the ministry of tables,' as they pall it, Acts 
vi., 2 (for not only the name, but the thing also is common 
among them), they have drawn away the faithful to impiety."* 
In his Misopogon, or satire upon the people of Antioch, he 
states that the noble, the wealthy, and the poor ; the most, if 

* Lardner, Ep. 43, 645, 646. 
Y 



254 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

not the whole of the city, were offended at him, because 
hey loved impiety. For so impious were they, that when 
he went, on a solemn day, to pay his homage to the temple 
of Apollo, there were none present to do honour to the god, 
nor did the great city provide any beasts for the sacrifice ; but, 
neglecting their duty to the gods, they maintained the poor 
with their goods, and thus brought their impiety into esteem.* 

The apostate is thus constrained to do homage to the hu- 
manity and liberality of Christians. And in his invectives 
against Christian teachers, who turned Greeks from idols to 
the service of the one living and true God, and in his wait- 
ings because of the multitude of Christian converts, the de- 
sertion of heathen temples, and the want of beasts for sacri- 
fices to his famished gods, while the poor of the people were 
abundantly supplied, we read his undesigned testimony to the 
fulfilment of prophecies descriptive of that kingdom of the 
Messiah which idolatry could not withstand, and which the 
Caesars could not overthrow. I will give thee for a light of 
the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes, Sfc. They shall go to con- 
fusion that are makers of idols. The idols he will utterly abol- 
ish. The Lord will famish all the gods of the earth ; and men 
shall worship him, dfc. The poor among men shall rejoice in 
the Holy One of Israel, and the scorner is consumed.^ 

They who bowed before idols could blaspheme the " word 
and ordinances of the living God," but those who refused to 
offer sacrifices would rather be themselves the victims. The 
charge of impiety brought against the Christians, because 
they would not worship those who were not gods, may, un- 
happily with too much truth, be retorted against Julian, the 
great sco # fferof his day. The grace of the gospel, in calling 
sinners to repentance, was as obnoxious a theme to him as 
to the prior antagonists of the gospel ; and it is not to be won- 
dered at, that they who rejected that grace from the first as 
to the last, should also misrepresent and revile it. " Julian, 
in his satire upon Constantine, brings in his son Constahtius, 
in the presence of his father, proclaiming to all in this man- 
ner : ' Whoever is a ravisher, a murderer, guilty of sacrilege, 
or any other abomination, let him come boldly. For when 
I have washed him with this water, I will immediately make 
him clean and innocent : and if he commits the same crime 
again, I will make him, after he has thumped his breast and 
beat his head, as clean as before.'" The just castigation of 
Julian by Dr. Bentley, in reference to this and similar mis- 
representations on the same subject, is here worthy of a 
place. " A ridiculous and stale banter, used by Celsus and 
others before Julian, upon the Christian doctrines of baptism, 

* Lardner, Ep. 43, p. 648. 

t Isa. xlii., 6, 7; xlv., 16 ; ii., 18. Zeph. ii., 11. Isa. xxxix., 19, 20. 



ARGUMENTS OF JULIAN. 255 

and repentance, and remission of sins. Baptism is rallied as 
'mere washing,' and repentance as thumping the breast 
and other outward grimace ; the inward grace and the in- 
trinsic change of mind are left out of the character. And 
whom are we to believe ? Those pagans or our own selves? 
Are we to fetch our notions of the sacraments from scraps 
of Julian and Celsus, or from the Scripture, the pure foun- 
tain, and from what we read, know, and profess 1 And yet 
the banter came more decently out of Celsus, an Epicurean's 
mouth, than out of Julian's, the most bigoted creature in the 
world. He to laugh at expiation by baptism, whose whole 
life, after his apostacy, was a continued course of Kadapftot, 
washings, purgations, expiations, with the most absurd cere- 
monies : addicted to the whole train of superstitious omens, 
presages, prodigies, spectres, dreams, visions, auguries, ora- 
cles, magic, theurgic, psychomantic : whose whole court, in a 
manner, consisted of harcispices, and sacrificuli, and philoso- 
phers as silly as they : who was always poring in the en- 
trails of cattle to find futurities there : who, if he had re- 
turned victor out of Persia (as his very pagan friends jested 
on him), would have extinguished the whole species of bulls 
and cows by the number of his sacrifices. I have drawn 
this character of him from his own writings, and the heathens 
his contemporaries, that I might not bring suspected testi- 
monies from Christian authors."* 

The cattle upon a thousand hills were not sufficient for a 
burnt- offering to cleanse a single stain of sin from a single 
soul. But he who offered hecatombs in vain, in his railings 
against Christian baptism confirms the word of Isaiah con- 
cerning Jesus : He shall sprinkle many nations. All we like 
sheep have gone astray. The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity 
of us all. He poured out his soul in death. He bare the sin of 
many, and made intercession for the transgressors. 

In the same degree in which Julian was devoted to super- 
stition, he set himself against Christianity, and wrote along 
and formal treatise on purpose of its refutation. And as 
meekness is not a virtue among the adversaries of the gos- 
pel, and would have ill befitted such an emperor as Julian, he 
entered on the task with no less confidence than humbler as- 
sailants, who have put it beyond his power to surpass them 
in that respect, and began by heralding his success, in de- 
claring " that he thought it right to show all men the reasons 
by which he had been convinced that the religion of the Gali- 
leans is a human contrivance, badly put together, having no- 
thing in it divine," &c. But all his threatenings against the 
Christian faith were as innocuous as his promise and purpose 
were vain to re-establish in Judea the commonwealth of Is- 

* See Lardner, vol. vii., p. 636. 



256 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

rael. He could no more cast down a single pillar of the 
Christian faith, than he could rebuild the temple of Jerusa- 
lem. And all his labour serves to show how surely its found- 
ations have been laid, and that no human power can shake 
the fabric, which is fitly put together, and is nothing else than 
Divine. 

It is chiefly in this treatise against Christianity, which his 
panegyrists commended as excelling that of Porphyry, that 
his enmity to the gospel is most strikingly displayed, and his 
most decisive testimony in its favour is supplied, in a man- 
ner of which he had as little presage as of the results of his 
Persian expedition. Though his whole work has not proved 
immortal, any more than the gods he worshipped, many frag- 
ments of it have been preserved, and have come down for 
our use in the present day. The book of an emperor was 
not to be hidden in obscurity ; nor was an argument against 
the Christian faith to pass in silence. " The elegance of the 
style," says Gibbon, u and the rank of the author, recom- 
mended his writings to the public attention j* and in the im- 
pious list of the enemies of Christianity, the celebrated name 
of Porphyry was effaced by the superior merit and reputa- 
tion of Julian."f Cyril's large work, in ten books, in an- 
swer to Julian, was addressed to the Emperor Theodosius ; 
and to it we are chiefly indebted for the preservation of great 
part of the treatise of Julian, given, as it is, in his own 
words, with the exception of the occasional exclusion of 
blasphemous terms, such as did not strengthen the argument, 
nor become a Christian to repeat. 

Men, recklessly rejecting the word of God, have ever ar- 
gued on the assumption that his thoughts are as their 
thoughts, and that all the moral government of the universe, 
to which they are alrens, lies within their comprehension. 
That God should have chosen the Jews as his peculiar peo- 
ple, among all the nations of the earth, was abhorrent to the 
notions of a Grecian polytheist, who worshipped a different 
patron god in almost every city which he entered. To bring 
home this charge against the Old Testament and the New, 
Julian, in support of it, adduced the authority of Moses, of 
Jesus, and of Paul ; and to show that the apostle, like a pol- 
ypus on the rocks, according to his simile, changed his opin- 
ions upon every occasion, he accuses him of affirming at one 
time that the Jews only are God's heritage, and at another, 
in order to persuade the Greeks, and gain them over to his 
side, saying, " Is he the God of the Jews only I Yes, of the 

* " Libanius(Orat. Parental., c. lxxxvii., p. 313), who has been suspected 
of assisting his friend, prefers this divine vindication (Orat. ix. in nocem 
Julian., p, 255, edit. Morel.) to the writings of Porphyry."— Gibbon, vol. ir., 
p. 81. 

+ Gibbon, vol. iv., p. 82. 



ARGUMENTS OF JULIAN. 257 

Gentiles also ;" and hence he founds one of his arguments 
against the Divine origin both of Judaism and Christianity. 
And he asserts, as may readily be admitted, that Paul ex- 
ceeds all the jugglers and impostors that ever were.* There 
is, indeed, a perfect harmony between the Old Testament and 
the New ; and the one, like the other, is Divine. They who 
were not a people, as prophets foretold and as Paul affirmed, 
are called to be the people of the living God. 

In arguing against the fulfilment of prophecy, he specially 
and by name refers to Matthew and Luke, and states that 
the genealogies recorded by them 41 had been shown to dif- 
fer from one another." Ancient as they are, all the objec- 
tions against the gospels stated by Julian are not original ; 
and here, as elsewhere, he seems to borrow so closely from 
Celsus and Porphyry as to warrant the presumption that 
their works, devoted as he was to Grecian literature at an 
early age, may not have been without their influence in his 
apostacy, as well as having turned others from the faith. 
But while Matthew and Luke are charged by him with want 
of dexterity in recording their respective genealogies of 
Christ, we cannot but admire the dexterity of our adversa- 
ries in supplying us with their conjoint testimony to the un- 
disputed genuineness of the records as written by the evan- 
gelists.! 

Some farther examples may be given of the reasonings of 
Julian against Christianity ; and little, in the present age, 
may suffice for our purpose, though all arguments, in all 
ages, have never been effectual for his. 

" Jesus," says Julian, as quoted by Cyril, "whom you cel- 
ebrate, was one of Caesars subjects. If you dispute it, I will 
prove it by-and-by ; but it may be as well done now. For 
yourselves allow that he was enrolled with his father and 
mother in the time of Cyrenius ; but after he was born, what 
good did he do to his relations 1 for they would not, as it is 
said, 'believe on him.' But yet that stiffnecked and hard- 
hearted people believed Moses. But Jesus, who ' rebuked 
the winds, and walked on the seas, and cast out demons,'' and, as 
you will have it, made the heaven and the earth (though 
none of his disciples presumed to say this of him, except 
John only, nor he clearly and distinctly ; however, let it be 
allowed that he said so), could not order his designs so as 
to save his friends and relations." Luke xi. John vii., 5. 
Matt, xiv., 25. Mark vi., 48. John i.% We admit the fact 
which Julian proves, that Jesus was one of Caesars subjects. 
For he was that servant of rulers whom princes have worship- 
ped, the time of whose coming was defined by prophets and 
accredited by pagans. 

* Lardner, vol. vii., p. 622, 623. s f Ibid., p. 625. % Ibid., p/627, 

Y2 



258 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

" Jesus having persuaded a few among you, and these 
among the worst of men, has now been celebrated about 
three hundred years ; having done nothing in his lifetime wor- 
thy of remembrance, unless any one thinks it a mighty mat- 
ter to heal lame and Mind people, and exorcise demoniacs in the 
villages of Bethsaida and Bethany."* 

" But you are so unhappy as not to adhere to the things 
delivered to you by the apostles; but they have been altered 
by you for the worse, and carried on to yet greater impiety. 
For neither Paul, nor Matthew, nor Luke, nor Mark, has dared 
to call Jesus God. But honest John, understanding that a 
great multitude of men in the cities of Greece and Italy were 
seized with this distemper, and hearing likewise, as I sup- 
pose, that the tombs of Peter and Paul were respectedf and 
frequented, though as yet privately only, then first presumed 
to advance that doctrine. J 

" But you, miserable people," says Julian, " at the same 
time that ye refuse to worship the shield that fell down from 
Jupiter, and is preserved by us, which was sent down to us 
by the great Jupiter, or our father Mars, as a certain pledge 
of the perpetual government of our city ; you worship the 
wood of the cross, and make signs of it upon your foreheads, 
and fix it upon your doors. Shall we for this most hate the 
understanding, or most pity the simple and ignorant among 
you, who are so very unhappy as to leave the immortal 
gods and go over to a dead Jew V 

The best and purest days of primitive Christianity had 
passed before the days of Julian ; and evil practices had be- 
gun to be introduced, the reprobation of which came not 
with the best grace or effect from an idolater, though no 
lover of the truth would utter a word in their defence. Some 
of these, practised by nominal believers after a false and safe 
profession of the faith could be made, were so utterly un- 
christian, that he who vilified the gospel was constrained to 
vindicate it from the imputation of affording them a sanction. 

After censuring Christians for having destroyed temples 
and altars, he adds, " You have killed not only our people, 
who persisted in the ancient religion, but likewise heretics 
equally deceived with yourselves, but who would not mourn 
the dead man exactly in the same manner that you do. But 
these are your own inventions ; for Jesus has nowhere directed 
you to do such things, nor yet Paul. The reason is, that they 
never expected that you would arrive at such power. They 
were contented with deceiving maidservants mid slaves, and 
by them some men and women, such as Cornelius and Ser- 
gius. If there were then any other men of eminence brought 
over to you, I mean in the times of Tiberius and Claudius, 

* I^rdner, vol. vii., p. 627. f Ibid., p. 628, 629. % Ibid., p. 630. 



AHGITMENTS OF JULIAN* 259 

when these things happened, let me pass for a liar in every- 
thing I say."* 

After the same manner Julian quotes various passages 
from the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles, 
which show that the natural man cannot comprehend the 
things of the Spirit, although he may, for that very reason, 
be a more unexceptionable, if not more competent, witness 
to the writings of the evangelists and apostles. 

The illustrations which have been adduced of the humble 
reasoning but noble testimony of the royal author, show how 
much could be achieved on behalf of the gospel in a few 
brief sentences, designed to prove that there is nothing Di- 
vine in the Christian religion. And we may well, again and 
again, express our wonder at the power which our adversa- 
ries exhibit, and which, in conclusiveness as to facts, not to 
arguments, may be deemed irresistible. And it is here, but 
here only, that believers may yield them the palm ; and we 
can only compare them one with another. Volney was not 
satisfied with illustrating less than six predictions in a single 
sentence, which far surpasses the labours of other commen- 
tators. And it would require some research into the wri- 
tings of the fathers, to collect from them so much evidence 
in so few sentences, referring so explicitly and directly to 
the origin of Christianity and the genuineness of the New 
Testament. The arguments having been appropriated by 
other adversaries, it is but reasonable that Christians should 
claim the facts. These, upon imperial authority, are, that 
Jesus was born at the time of the taxing (or, as properly ren- 
dered by Julian, enrolling) in the time of Cyrenius, or in the 
reign of Augustus ; that his doctrine was promulgated by 
himself and his apostles in the reigns of Tiberius and Clau- 
dius, the latter of whom died about twenty years after the 
crucifixion of Christ ; that within that period, not only some 
maidservants and slaves, and some men and women, but 
Cornelius and Sergius, men of eminence, were converted 
from among the Gentiles, or brought over to the Christian 
faith ; that, as told in two lines, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 
John, were all writers of the Christian Scriptures ; that John 
wrote his history of the life of Christ after the other gospels 
had been written, and subsequent to the death of Paul and 
Peter, or according to the date generally assigned by all 
Christians; and that, previous to that time (about A. D. 68), 
a great multitude of men in the cities of Greece and Italy 
had embraced the Christian faith ; that the life of Jesus was 
not only thus written by those who were eyewitnesses of 
his works, but that Jesus had healed the blind and the lame, 
and cast out devils, and rebuked the winds, and walked on 

* Lardner, vol. vii., p. 630 ? 631 ? - 



260 APPROPRIATION OF THE 

the seas ; and that, whether such works in the estimation of 
Julian were mighty or not, they were not. to be denied by 
those who disparaged them, and that Jesus had ever been 
celebrated from the time that they were wrought. 

Though it was a dubious article in the pagan creed wheth- 
er the great shield which fell from heaven was sent from the 
great Jupiter or from Mars, yet a heathen emperor was wil- 
ling to own himself a liar if any other men of eminence were 
converted from among the Gentiles, within a brief and lim- 
ited time, but those who (exclusive of Jews or Jewish pros- 
elytes) are named in the Acts of the Apostles; and he could 
say, as expressly as significantly, what things Jesus and Paul 
had nowhere directed to be done. The genuineness of the 
Christian scriptures is not merely held to be undoubted, but, 
instead of a Christian challenging a heathen, an unbeliever 
and a gainsayer challenges Christians to deny or to dispute 
it, or to bring forward any other or contradictory testimony 
as to the facts which the Scriptures record, or to the pre- 
cepts which they enjoin. And now that the word of God is 
tried, though in a thousand ways, and ever comes out like 
gold from the furnace, and that the name of Jesus is still 
honoured after eighteen hundred years, the shield which 
they would not worship, and the oracles which they would 
not believe, though adored and revered by those who mocked 
at the faith of Him of whom all the prophets testified, are il- 
lustrations of the scriptural affirmation, that, while the lip of 
truth shall be established for ever, a lying tongue is but for 
a moment. And, while the words of our enemies are en- 
during monuments of the genuineness of our Scriptures, the 
once adored shield, which, in our skeptical notions, first fell 
from the forge of some son of Vulcan upon earth, having 
failed to fulfil its pledge as to the perpetual government of a 
pagan city, may serve as a memorial of the reasoning of Ju- 
lian, and, though eaten up of rust and unfit to be worshipped, 
may be good enough to grace the tomb of the immortals, 
from whom the apostate, who cast away the heaven-de- 
scended shield of faith, believed that the piece of earthly 
iron came down. 

The word of the Jewish prophets turns darkness into light. 
And our enemies, from first to last, by bearing witness to 
facts which they foretold, are constrained to prove that the 
shield of faith which Christians bear hath indeed come down 
from heaven. The gods of the heathens were not immor- 
tals. But he who once was dead is alive again, and liveth 
for evermore. And those alone are " miserable people" who 
believe not in Jesus, and die in their sins. The contempt- 
uous designation of a " dead Jew" is itself a sign of his Mes- 
siahship. The lion of the tribe of Judah arose from the grave, 
as the king of the forest, arising from sleep, shakes himself 



ARGUMENTS OF JULIAN. 261 

from the dust. According to the prophets who spake by in- 
spiration of God, he it is and he alone that was cut off out of 
the land of the living, who hath prolonged his days, and in whose 
hand the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper. His death was the 
needful precursor of salvation to man. The Messiah was to 
be cut off, but not for himself. And it was even because he 
poured out his soul in death that he was to divide a portion 
with the great and the spoil with the strong. 

In the triumph of prophetic and Christian truth, the cap- 
tive enemies of the cross usher in the heralds of the gospel, 
strew all their flowers in the way, lay down their palms be- 
fore the feet of the apostles of Jesus, and bear the chains 
which they themselves had forged. 

Before going forth with the Israelites from dark and idol- 
atrous Egypt, Moses said unto Pharaoh, who sought to keep 
their goods, " Thou must give us also sacrifices and burnt- 
offerings, that we may sacrifice unto the Lord our God. Our 
cattle also shall go with us ; there shall not a hoof be left 
behind ; for thereof must we take to serve the Lord our 
God." Gen. x., 25, 26. And when Joshua had entered the 
land of Canaan, and conquered the kings that fought against 
him, he said unto the captains of Israel, " Come near, put 
your feet upon the necks of these kings ; and they put their 
feet upon the necks of them. And Joshua said unto them, 
Be strong and of good courage ; for thus shall the Lord do 
to all your enemies." And in passing from the land of our 
enemies and entering on holy ground, the proudest of our 
foes must give us sacrifices and burnt-offerings, that we may 
offer them unto the Lord our God ; of all that our enemies 
would take from us, not a hoof shall be left behind ; we may 
put our feet upon the necks of their captive kings ; and the 
triumph of the gospel may at least be like that of the law. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

OF THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 

It would betray equal ignorance and presumption to at- 
tempt, within the compass of a few pages, to give anything 
like a complete view of the credibilit}^ of the Christian faith, 
in respect even to the manner in which it has been commu- 
nicated, or ill which it is set before our reason, and held 
forth to the belief and acceptance of man. Every writer on 
such a subject must feel himself encumbered with the abun- 
dance of materials, and his only difficulty lies in selecting, ar- 



S62 OF THE AUTHENTICITY OF 

ranging, and condensing them. This, our only labour, in- 
creases at every step as we go on in the investigation of the 
evidence of Christianity. The mine on which we are now 
entering has been often explored ; much precious ore has 
been brought from it, some of the latest of which is also 
some of the richest. And as bright gems, before unseen, 
ever spring up anew and sparkle beneath the hand of the 
miner, so, we doubt not, much still remains to reward and 
bless the researches of those who, in confirmation of the 
faith of others, as well as for perfecting their own, diligently 
search the Scriptures. Not in this field alone, but in every 
other, the analogy holds good between the word and the 
works of God, that many facts, ever open to investigation in 
the discovery of truth, have only of late been searched out 
and applied ; and the darkness which, to unobservant spec- 
ulatists, seemed to hang over both, begins at last to be com- 
pletely cleared away. All that can be attempted here is a 
simple exhibition of the form of credibility in which the gos- 
pel is set before us. And though it would require terse and 
massy volumes to exhaust the subject, yet, from the fulness 
of the matter, a few reflections may suffice to show that, 
while, as we have seen, there is nothing questionable in the 
testimony respecting the genuineness of the Christian scrip- 
tures as written by the disciples and apostles of Jesus, so 
there is nothing incomplete in the record, and nothing to be 
found that can warrant the most scrupulous inquirer to with- 
hold his faith from those witnesses of Jesus who, after the 
prophets, first testified of Him, and whose writings have come 
down untarnished from their hands into our own. 

Having dilated largely on the testimony borne to the 
genuineness of the New Testament, not merely because of its 
importance and abundance, but also and chiefly because many 
of the facts are little known and not easily accessible to the 
generality of readers, this reason may well be reversed, and 
the proof of the authenticity of the gospels and epistles may 
be drawn within a narrower compass, because the knowledge 
of the facts on which it mainly rests are within the reach of 
all. We need but to search in order to discover, or, rather, 
simply to come and see, how perfectly the very framework 
of the gospel is adapted to its purpose of conveying to man, 
in a credible and intelligible form, the revelation of the will, 
of the mercy, and of the grace of God. 

While the proved inspiration of the Jewish prophets, the 
credibility of miracles even from experience, the Divine au- 
thority of the Mosaic dispensation, are all before us, and 
while the words of the Lord by his prophets concerning the 
Messiah are yet in our hearing, and demand that their fulfil- 
ment should be shown, we neither stop nor stoop to banter 
with the fancies of men about the impossibility, the improba- 



THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 263 

bility, or the needlessness of a Divine revelation. For reason 
would be abjured in pausing to question whether the proph- 
ets of a God of mercy as well as justice had not a higher 
purpose to fulfil than to foretel the desolations of cities be- 
cause of sin ; whether he who in times past and in divers 
manners spake unto the Israelites by the prophets, might not 
speak again by others unto all ; whether, as the God not of 
the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles, he might not give a 
perfect revelation of his will for all nations of the earth, as, 
ultimately for their sakes, he had formerly given unto one. 
Nor do we enter for a moment on the discussion of the ques- 
tion, not to be mooted without blaspheming the name and 
belying the word of the Holy One of Israel, whether he 
would keep back his new and everlasting covenant, and 
break his promise and his oath to the father of the faithful, 
and to David to whom he had sworn, or whether the limited 
time never should arrive when Messiah the Prince should 
come, and be cut off, or whether every threatened judgment 
should be fulfilled, and every promised blessing be revoked 
and disannulled. No ; the sure word of prophecy is not to 
be held in abeyance, nor its credit to be suspended, till the 
fantastic imaginations of men be consulted and satisfied. 
The verdict of reason, as given by Socrates and Plato, who 
confessed the need of a revelation from on high, and ex- 
pressed the hope that a Divine Being would for that end visit 
the world ; every form of false faith ; the gross darkness 
that covered the world ; the deep debasement of our moral 
nature ; the imperfect virtue and the sanctioned vices of 
heathen moralists ; their waht alike of motives, of means, 
and of power to reform, or, rather, to renovate mankind ; 
idolatry in all its forms — man, in whom God had put a spirit, 
bending to stocks and stones, and four-footed beasts, and 
creeping things, changing the glory of God into a lie, and 
turning his own glory into the deepest degradation; the 
blinded consultation of heathen oracles which spoke for hire, 
pandered to the evil passions of men, and often stimulated 
to war, and which never uttered a word worthy of the re- 
membrance of the world ; the miserable ignorance of the 
pagan priesthood, who could neither tell nor do anything by 
which man could be saved from sin, and who acted rather 
like necromancers than teachers of mankind ; the sacrificial 
rites of the heathens, in all their cruelties, miseries, and 
abominations, the screams of children passing through the 
fire, the blood of immolated human victims that long drenched 
the altars in every country under heaven, and the renewed 
indulgence in sin so soon as expiated in the blood of their 
kindred ; the character of the gods,, patterns of vice, and fit 
agents of the prince of darkness, under whose domination 
iniquity would have been perpetuated ; the idols that are still 



264 OF THE AUTHENTICITY 0^ 

brought from heathen lands, and all the barbarous deeds that 
yet are done under the sacred but abused name of religion ; 
every virtue, to the astounding of pagans, that was practised 
by the early Christians, while the power of the faith as it is 
in Jesus was felt, and a proof was given to the world what 
glorious forms, through its efficacy, could be raised out of 
ruins ; every evil that has resulted from the corruption and 
perversion of Christianity, from whence idolatry was re- 
newed, and the " dark ages" returned, while the light of the 
gospel was hid, and the commandments of men were sub- 
stituted for the word of God ; and the disorganizing of so- 
ciety and demonizing of men, the experience of which needs 
not to be told, which followed the national abjuration of the 
Christian faith, when nothing but the name had to be re- 
nounced ; all these, but not these alone, even the whole his- 
tory of our race might tend to show, from the mere outward 
aspect of the state of man, that human nature was not with- 
out the need of a remedy or man of a Redeemer, but that 
our blindness is such as God alone can enlighten, and our 
sin and misery such as that God alone could find a ransom. 
And all cry aloud from every quarter and from every age, 
that light from heaven could alone enlighten the nations, and 
that all the ends of the earth stood in need of the promised 
salvation of the Lord. 

It would be in vain for one man to address another in a 
language tc him unknown. And the mode of communicating 
truths, though they be divine, has necessarily to be adapted 
to the faculties and perceptions of those for whose instruc- 
tion they are revealed. In declaring his will to men and 
not to angels, it seemed meet unto the Lord, as experience 
in the case of Israel shows, to make use of human means 
and human instrumentality, even as throughout all nature he 
has adapted everything to its object, and has fitted its shell 
to the worm. 

Deriving all our knowledge of external things, and of what- 
ever happens in the world, through the medium of our senses, 
it is necessary, if we remain not in utter ignorance, that 
such knowledge be communicated to us in some tangible 
shape or intelligible form. Far superior to the faint and im- 
perfect traces which oral tradition leaves of events long 
past, history presents us with their vivid impressions as if 
they were ever new; and as if embalming them while yet 
they retained their actual and living form, preserves them 
from the corruption that preys upon all human things. By 
its means the past becomes the heritage of the future. And, 
fitted to the immortal mind, the events of many generations lie 
open to our view; the evanescent interests of an hour leave, 
as they pass, an enduring memorial; and as the augury of a 
higher judgment to come, they may be brought to the bar of 



THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 265 

human judgment ; and in the decision of enlightened reason, 
the heartless lust of power and senseless pride of life, which 
formed the vainglories of their day, may meet with their 
merited reprobation ; and, in retributive justice, the presage 
of a righteous judgment, it may at least sometimes happen, 
that he who exalted himself is humbled, and he who humbled 
himself is exalted. And thus, looking alone to the mighty in- 
fluence of their record, none of all who have ever written, 
though registering the actions of the greatest of earthly con- 
querors, gifted with the highest genius, and skilled in more 
than all the literature of Greece and Rome, shall be found 
worthy to occupy a second place near to those once de- 
spised and reputed "abject" Galileans, w T ho wrote the history 
and recorded the doctrine of Jesus of Nazareth. 

History, whatever may be its importance or use, is often 
of itself imperfect, being sometimes scarcely discriminated 
from fable, when not drawn from any authentic source, and 
at other times resting solely on traditions, and unsubstan- 
tiated by any contemporary record, or the express testimony 
of a single individual to whom the recorded events were per- 
sonally known. In its most perfect form,, while it transmits 
to future ages the knowledge of facts which were influential 
on the fate of the world and notorious in their acted time, it 
is drawn not merely from an unvarying and universal tradi- 
tion, but from the testimony of eyewitnesses, or from origi- 
nal writings and documents bearing on the transactions and 
records, while they were yet new, or, like an original paint- 
ing, it may be transcribed from the life as written by one 
who related wtiat he saw, and with which, it may be, his own 
fate was involved. In the last and most direct form which 
history can assume, if its genuineness be admitted, or if it 
be proved to be the work of its reputed author, then, how- 
ever distant may be the period to which it refers, instead of 
any dark or dense medium of transmission that would dis- 
figure every object and obscure the perception of it, there is 
nothing questionable but the veracity of the historian, and 
there is nothing between his readers and the knowledge of 
the facts which he records but the sight of his eyes by which 
they were seen, and the words of his lips or the writing of 
his pen by which they were communicated. And the only 
doubt that can arise is whether he is a false or a faithful 
witness, whether he sought to palm a fable on the world, 
however cunningly devised, or whether he plainly told what 
he saw or what he did, and what he could not but know to 
be truth. There are histories which rank in this highest 
class, and that need nothing but their undisputed genuine- 
ness and the admitted veracity of their authors to command 
a direct and immediate credibility. Xenophon's account of 
the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, Caesar's Commenta- 

Z 



266 Of THE AUTHENTICITY OF 

ries, Josephus's History of the Jewish War, may be adduced 
as instances. And though the first two of these were ante- 
rior to the Christian Scriptures, and the last nearly contem- 
porary with them, they have not lost one iota of their credi- 
bility in the lapse of time, which has conferred on them the 
sanction of ages. Such, in historical researches, is the value 
of any direct and positive testimony, that, from the want of 
it, doubts naturally arise and discussions ensue ; and the 
subsequent discovery of a single genuine letter of any party 
to the event, or from any one who was cognizant of the 
facts, might, even with a word, suffice to terminate the keen- 
est historical controversy that ever existed. In the defi- 
ciency or want of such testimony, any access to the truth is 
eagerly seized ; and when truth alone is the object of inves- 
tigation or inquiry, proof, such as the case admits of, is gen- 
erally and readily acquiesced in; for, were it otherwise, his- 
torical facts, of all others the best attested and universally 
believed, would be easily denied, and a skeptic in history 
would make but little progress in knowledge. 

The word that is of God, the scriptural history of Jesus, 
does not partake of the imperfection that is here attachable 
to human writings. The testimony was not only sealed with 
blood, but is of itself complete. And in taking up the New 
Testament as the genuine writings of the evangelists and 
apostles of Jesus, we handle documents of a different order, 
of a more direct kind, and of a more distinctive character, as 
well as in a more abundant measure, than those which or- 
dinary history presents ; and were Christians to take them 
as a standard, and to demand a similar and corresponding 
testimony in every particular, before assent should be yield- 
ed to any records of anything that has happened in the 
world beyond the memory of the existing generation, or 
which their own eyes have not seen, all history would be. 
annihilated, if nothing else could constitute the name but the 
independent narratives of various individuals who wrote 
from personal knowledge, who all saw the facts which they 
describe, or who were familiar with the habits and witnesses 
of the actions of the man whose character they delineated 
or whose life they wrote, and who, moreover, were each and 
all called to give the strongest demonstration that could be 
conceived of their belief in what they wrote ; and the wit- 
nesses of Jesus alone could be heard. 

Notwithstanding the superior credibility generally and 
justly attached to direct and immediate rather than to de- 
rived or secondary testimony, yet a history, indisputably the 
work of its reputed author, may bear internal marks of its 
falsity, and be utterly unworthy of the slightest credit. But 
whether he be himself deceived, or seek to palm a deception 
upon others, the falsehood is chargeable on the historian ; 



THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 26t 

every allegation that the narration is not true is an impeach- 
ment of his veracity, if the nature of the events was such 
that he could not have been deceived concerning them ; or 
a charge against his credulity in believing, and rashness, if 
not guiltiness, in recording what was false, if he himself had 
been deluded or deceived. In either case, an alleged his- 
tory may be proved to be a fable, which the name of the au- 
thor, though known, would be insufficient to substantiate as 
fact ; and, instead of being believed, he would be rightly held 
as a fabricator or promulgator of falsehood. The Koran of 
Mohammed, enjoining faith and forbidding inquiry, may be 
here adduced as an instance. It was the genuine production 
of a false prophet, which cannot stand the slightest scrutiny, 
but bears many marks of imposture. It unfolded a faith that 
rested on assumptions and allegations which had not even 
the pretence of a psoof, and it was enforced not by argu- 
ment, but by the sword, and abundance of prey supplied the 
lack of evidence. 

Try all things ; holdfast to that which is right, are Christian 
precepts ; and it is not in contravention of such commands, 
nor in Violation of any other to which Christians are required 
to yield a dutiful acquiescence, that the utmost latitude may 
here be given to free inquiry, and that men, in the fullest 
exercise of their reason, may judge of the credibility of the 
testimony which has been borne by the disciples and apos- 
tles of Jesus, whether they be really faithful witnesses or 
not. Has the New Testament ample or satisfactory marks 
of authenticity as a historical record 1 or is there anything 
in which the testimony which it bears can be shown to be 
either defective or fallacious'? Let the question be put in 
any way that our adversaries can devise, all that the Chris- 
tian asks is liberty to answer it. 

Having seen, from the most unexceptionable testimony, 
altogether independent of that of the writers of the New 
Testament, that Jesus, the author of the Christian faith, was 
put to death, and that Christianity originated at the very time 
and in the very manner which they represent ; and that its 
progress in the world, and the hostility which it encountered, 
and many other facts connected with its origin, were pre- 
cisely such as they describe, and, though narrated by hea- 
thens, are as accordant with the predicted facts relative to 
the Messiah as with the scriptural history of Jesus ; having 
seen, also, how the writings of the New Testament have been 
quoted thousands and thousands of times from the earliest 
ages to the present, without a question of their being the 
very writings of the disciples of Jesus, and were argued 
from as such by the earliest controversial opponents of 
Christianity; and having Hume's argument, by which their 
testimony was impeached or evaded — of itself a proof that 



268 OP THE AUTHENTICITY OB* 

one of these writers foretold, as he also refuted, his great 
argument nearly seventeen hundred years before the skeptic 
invented it — surely any further discussion as to the admissi- 
bility of their testimony would be a tax upon the patience 
rather than an appeal to the sober judgment of the reader. 
And enough may have been said to show cause that the wit- 
nesses of Jesus are worthy of a hearing, and have a right 
to demand it; and that, instead of wisdom, it would be the 
greatest folly to reject their testimony unheard. We have 
seen how their enemies used the Christian's weapons, and it 
is but reasonable that they should be taken up at last in de- 
fence of the gospel. And the evangelists and apostles of 
Jesus, confessed as such by our adversaries, may well ap- 
peal to the understanding of men, whether they who were 
ready to die for the faith may not join, in a common testi- 
mony on its behalf, with those who strove in vain to testify 
against it. Let it be seen whether they are found true or 
false witnesses for God ; and let us come and reason to- 
gether whether these witnesses, whom, as Christians affirm, 
God had chosen, were left inadequate to the task which he 
assigned them, or whether men can bring forth better wit- 
nesses to events long past, or produce any history of any 
man that can be proved to be true, and the history of Jesus 
be left in doubt. 

The New Testament, as the record of the life and doctrine 
of Jesus, is not to be brought down to a comparison with any 
other history that was ever written, even by an eyewitness 
of all that he related ; it rather bears the character, in every 
age, of a case ripe for investigation and ready for proof, 
where each witness speaks in his own name, and their joint 
testimony may be sifted and compared, so that on the most 
rigid investigation, however often renewed, the proof may 
come clearly out, that facts and not fictions are related : that 
Jesus taught, and lived, and died, and arose from the dead; 
and that such testimony is borne concerning him, that all who 
believe in Moses and the prophets must believe in him. And 
an appeal may be made to the understanding of men, and, in 
right, a verdict may be demanded from all who do not reject 
alike the evidence which the gospel imparts and the salvation 
which it offers, that the word is of God and not of man, and 
that it is as clear that the Scriptures are true as that they 
were written by the disciples of Jesus. 

On opening the New Testament, we read the testimony 
of four witnesses, in the form of four distinct and circumstan- 
tial histories of the author of the Christian religion. Two of 
these were written by apostles, and the other two by two 
disciples of Jesus, of whom the one was the companion of 
the apostle Peter after the death of Christ, and the other of 
the apostle Paul. By Luke, the last of these, the Acts of the 



THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 269 

Apostles were also recorded. Besides these five histories, 
there are twenty-two separate epistles, of which fourteen 
were written by Paul. Nine of these were severally written 
to seven Christian churches or assemblies of believers, who 
had been converted to the Christian faith from Judaism or 
paganism. One of these churches was in Rome, the capital 
of the world ; another in the city of Ephesus, so renowned for 
the temple and the worship of Diana ; and others in various 
cities of Greece, which was no less renowned for wisdom. 
These epistles were thus spread throughout the civilized 
world. Another was addressed specially to the Hebrews, 
wherever they were scattered. Of the other epistles of Paul, 
two were written to Timothy, one to Titus, eminent preach- 
ers of the gospel, and one to Philemon, a Christian of Co- 
losse. There are, besides these, one epistle of James, two 
of Peter, three of John, and one of Jude ; and the Book of 
the Revelation of Jesus Christ, in which the spirit of prophecy 
concludes, as it began, the testimony of Jesus, and assigns 
the charge to the history of the world, ultimately to confirm 
that testimony. On the whole, there are twenty-seven sep- 
arate WTitings, by eight different persons, partly historical, 
doctrinal, practical, and prophetic, all referring to one great 
subject, all gradually unfolding or developing one great sys- 
tem, professedly the revelation of God to man by Jesus Christ, 
and all assuredly published soon after the introduction of 
Christianity into the world. On this bare statement of the 
case, as it is thus presented to the world, and is open to the 
investigation of all men, there are abundant means of judging 
of the credibility of the record, and of deciding whether these 
writings bear the marks of authenticity or of imposture. An 
advocate opposed to any claim founded on documents like 
these could not wish for more ample means of exposing any 
fable, however cunningly devised ; and, with such abundant 
materials for cross-examination, he would be little versant in 
that art who would suffer unauthentic documents to pass 
through his hands without an immediate exposure and com- 
plete refutation. But seventeen hundred years have not suf- 
ficed either for detecting the fallacy or exhausting the proofs 
of the authenticity of the New Testament Scriptures. 

Seeing that the prophets of Israel testified of the Messiah, 
as well as that the Christian scriptures were written by the 
apostles and disciples of Jesus, we lay not aside the testimony 
of God in taking up the testimony of man. But we inquire 
into the credibility of the latter in order to compare the his- 
torical with the prophetic record, that it may be seen how 
the faith of the gospel stands firm and immoveable on the 
conjoint and consolidated foundation of apostles and prophets. 
And for this end a cursory glance may here be given at the 

Z 2 



270 OF THE AUTHENTICITY OP 

fulness of the testimony, and the credibility of the witnesses 
of Jesus. 

To discuss at large the fulness of the testimony which they 
bear to Jesus as the Christ would be superfluous, if not end- 
less labour; and were any one to demand the proof, that 
alone would be equivalent to an admission on his part that 
he had never read, if he had ever opened, the New Testament. 
If the witnesses of Jesus have spoken truth, there never was 
a fact more completely demonstrated. Each of the evange- 
lists has singly said enough to show that Jesus was invested 
with a Divine commission, and that the doctrine which he 
taught must be of God. And in like manner as it was de- 
clared to a Christian church by one of the writers of the New 
Testament, that he was determined not to know anything 
among them but Jesus Christ and him crucified, so they all 
wrote as if it had been the determination of each to make 
Christ and his cause their exclusive theme. The separate 
histories and epistles which came from their pens comport 
well with the character and calling of those who had left all 
and followed him. Witnesses, in ordinary cases, have their 
minds often distracted with the cares of other things, and 
yield but a hesitating assent to what they lightly regarded ; 
and in the investigation of facts it is not an unusual task to 
sift for a few grains of evidence out of a mass of irrelevant 
matter. But the Christian testimony is of another kind. All 
that the witnesses of Jesus say tells upon their cause, even 
where at first sight it may seem to militate against it. Of 
themselves they utter not a word but in connexion with his 
cause. And so full is their testimony, that a hundredth part 
of what they have testified cannot be believed, without admit- 
ting that the mission of Jesus was- Divine, and that his reli- 
gion is of God. 

As their testimony in regard to all that affects the truth of 
Christianity is most ample, so their competency as witness- 
es, in respect to their knowledge of the facts, could not in 
any case be exceeded. The life of Jesus, during the period 
of his public ministry, may be said to have been public, or 
open to the inspection of all. He was the author of a new 
religion; he taught openly throughout all the region of Ju- 
dea; and in secret he did nothing. But, besides the multi- 
tude of witnesses of his acts and of the disciples who fol- 
lowed him, some, as if constituted a jury to sit and judge, 
not from the testimony of others, but from all his words and 
actions as they were immediately heard and seen by them- 
selves, were specially chosen to be always with him. Wher- 
ever he went they went; they were his associates in private 
as in public ; to follow him was their first calling and their 
constant occupation ; and it was not to be left even in order 
that a son might go and bury his father. And when for once 



THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 271 

he sent them forth to preach the gospel, though they were 
not for a time the witnesses of his miracles, they were en- 
dowed with a power like his own. The causa scientice, or 
means of knowledge, is an important and essential point in 
the testimony of witnesses. And does it not pass all other 
example and all parallel whatever, that twelve men should 
be able to testify, from personal knowledge, to the actions, 
whether public or private, of a single individual, in a variety 
of places, under a variety of circumstances, and continuously 
for years ; that they should maintain the word of their tes- 
timony by their exclusive devotedness to his service, and by 
their sufferings or their death ; that not a few of them should 
bear witness by their writings, and the only recreant among 
them by his despair and suicide 1 Of the eight writers of 
the books of the New Testament, six were apostles. By 
two of them, and also by two other witnesses, the life of 
Jesus is recorded, and the testimony concerning him is thus 
doubly and repeatedly strengthened and confirmed. No lan- 
guage can be more explicit or express than that which they 
had a right to adopt ; nor could a stronger assurance be given 
than that which they had the power to impart. Mark was 
successively the companion and fellow-labourer of Paul and 
of Peter, especially of the latter. Luke, as he affirms, had 
from the first perfect understanding of all things that were 
most surely believed among Christians. The gospels by 
Matthew and John are obviously, as coming from their hands, 
the testimony of eyewitnesses and ministers of the word : 
" That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, 
and which we have seen with our eyes, which we have 
looked upon and our hands have handled, &c, declare we 
unto you." This is the disciple who testified of these 
things, and wrote these things, &c. They, and also Peter, 
James, and Jude, were named and numbered among those 
abjects, as imperial pride and apostate hatred chose to desig- 
nate them, who had companied with Jesus all the time he 
went in and out among them, beginning from the baptism of 
John until the day in which he was taken up from them. 
And the very reproach which was cast on Jesus, because of 
such unseemly consortship for the Son of God, in wander- 
ing about with such mean associates or humble followers, 
elevates them in this respect to the highest rank as witness- 
es ; and because that such was the fact, our enemies being 
judges, their indisputable competency to testify from per- 
sonal knowledge, and from actual observation and experi- 
ence, is apparent, and their qualification and fitne-ss for their 
office is thus enhanced beyond the claims or pretensions of 
ordinary historians. The doctrine of the gospel, or the 
principles of the Christian faith, and the practice which it 
enjoins, as fully unfolded in the epistles, come directly from 



272 OF THE AUTHENTICITY OP 

the hands of the apostles, and theirs alone. In the New 
Testament we see Christianity as it budded and burst forth, 
and grew up and spread widely under the eyes of the apos- 
tles. It is presented to us in its original and unalterable 
form by those who were first commissioned to preach it unto 
the world. We are not called on to give heed to any second- 
hand testimony as to the facts, nor to any second-hand au- 
thority as to the doctrines. And the doctrines of the gospel, 
being founded on the facts of which the writers were eye- 
witnesses, are guarantied by their testimony with an assu- 
rance of truth which could not have pertained to any system 
of opinions detached from cognizable and confirmatory facts. 
In reading the scriptures we are, so to speak, brought up to 
the scene to see what passed, and within the hearing of the 
evangelists and apostles to listen to their voice. And, our 
enemies being judges, we learn from them the things which 
Jesus said, as they heard them out of his own mouth, and the 
things which Jesus did, as they saw them with their own 
eyes. 

It is manifest also, without the need of any demonstration, 
that the facts were of such a nature, that while the apostles, 
as well as, in general, thousands besides, had the most di- 
rect and abundant means not only of knowing, but of wit- 
nessing their actual reality, they could not themselves, by 
any possibility, have been deceived. It was in all things to 
the senses and not to the imaginations of men, to their per- 
ceptions and not to their credulity, that Jesus appealed. The 
truth of the doctrine was involved in the things that were 
seen. And no enthusiast, however ignorant or weak, could 
have been deceived as to facts which were of so palpable a 
nature as those which constitute the history of Jesus. There 
may be some "method in the madness" of a single individ- 
ual. But if it were to be said of all the witnesses of Jesus, 
as Festus said of Paul, that they were beside themselves or 
mad, and that they were actuated by a blind and wild fanat- 
icism, such a charge is not worthy of a hearing, and merits 
nothing but to be retorted ; for, to pass over a thousand 
proofs of its inanity, it is utterly inconceivable that the same 
fiction could have been framed or formed in the minds of two 
individuals, or that any accordance, bearing the slightest 
semblance of consistency or truth, could have been found in 
a multiplicity of details by various witnesses respecting things 
visible and audible, which they had seen or heard. In read- 
ing any part whatever of the life of Christ or of the doctrine 
of the gospel, nothing can be more obvious, if the state- 
ments be not true, than that the writers in such a case, suppos- 
able only for argument's sake, were false witnesses, though 
professedly of God, and that a more wilful as well as gross, 
imposition was never palmed upon the world. Mohammed, 



THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 273 

the sole writer of the Koran, and sole witness on its behalf, 
might possibly have dreamed of his night's journey to heaven, 
and imagined the reality of other fooleries of which the Ko- 
ran is full; for, however absurd and self- contradictory, such 
bounds do not limit the extravagance of fancy or the chi- 
meras of an unsettled mind. And charity might suggest a 
doubt whether the unaccredited tale had its origin in wild 
fanaticism or wilful falsehood. But the testimony of the 
witnesses of Jesus was either strictly true or consciously 
false. The case, from its very nature, admits not of any- 
other alternative. And their testimony stands for trial, wheth- 
er they faithfully related what they saw and could not but 
know, or whether, lost to all sense of truth, and braving at 
once all the rage of man mid all the wrath of God, they 
leagued together to devise a fable, to the manifest and con- 
scious destruction of themselves and of thousands who em- 
braced their cause. 

The allegation that the apostles were weak and ignorant 
men, who were easily duped into the belief of a fiction, is as 
senseless a subterfuge as any to which a vanquished rea- 
soner ever betook himself; and, on the part of all who urge 
it, it is a manifest proof that the gospel of salvation is re- 
jected without the trouble of a hearing or the expense of a 
thought. Impotent and ignorant of themselves they were, 
"till so strengthened with all might that nothing could resist 
them ; and so enlightened from on high, that the wisest on 
earth might have learned from their lips : but their own pow- 
erlessness was no longer a reproach when paganism shook 
at their touch ; nor were they any longer to be rightfully 
stigmatized as foolish when they could speak in a breath or 
pen in a sentence more knowledge of things spiritual and 
eternal than is to be found in the volumes of Plato. Mean 
as was their calling and illiterate as they were, the proof 
was the more plain that the power and the wisdom were 
alike of God ; and the farther were they removed from the 
imputation of deep, designing subtilty, or of any artful com- 
bination to impose upon mankind. But, whatever their nat- 
ural talents might have been, they most assuredly were not 
destitute of the sense and understanding common to our 
race. Their sight was as clear and their hearing as acute 
as that of other men. They could judge of what they saw, 
and record it as faithfully as if they had been selected from 
the Academy of Athens or the Forum of Rome. And they 
were no less competent to judge of facts, and to keep their 
narrative free of all fiction, than they would have been if 
their minds had previously been trammelled with all the sub- 
tleties of a vain philosophy. Honest reporters of truth were 
alone required, sufficiently versant with the facts and suffi- 
ciently numerous to confirm the testimony, however unprac- 



274 THE AUTHENTICITY OF 

tised in art, or unrefined in manners, or unskilled in those 
disingenuous artifices which are not always banished from 
polished society, any more, at least, than from the cabin or 
the cot of humble fishermen. May not artless sincerity, the 
most befitting qualification of witnesses, be as rationally 
looked for from such a quarter as from any other ? And may 
not those who stigmatize evangelists and apostles be chal- 
lenged to adduce any other history to outvie or rival theirs 
in that essential quality 1 Their own failings and faults they 
did not disguise, nor did they conceal the indignities to 
which their master was subjected. They agreed where im- 
postors never could have agreed,* and they differed where 
impostors never would have differed. They assumed not 
the office of disputants or advocates, nor were they qualified, 
like many other men, to make " the worse appear the better 
reason;" but therefore were they the better fitted to tell 
those things which they saw and heard, without the power 
and without the need of garnishing error or dissembling 
truth. And so clear is the credibility of the apostles and 
witnesses of Jesus in respect to the absolute impossibility 
of their having been themselves deceived, that, obvious as it 
is in general to every unprejudiced reader of Scripture, brief 
illustrations of the same truth may be adduced in reference 
to those things concerning which their testimony might be 
seemingly the most questionable, the resurrection of Jesus, 
his ascension into heaven, and his exaltation at the right 
hand of the majesty of God. 

Instead of their being chargeable with credulity, Jesus, ap- 
pearing o the apostles as they sat at meat, upbraided them 
with the r unbelief and hardness of heart, because they be- 
lieved not them which had seen him after he was risen. f 
Having witnessed his death and his burial, as known to all 
Jerusalem, his own word, " Peace be unto you," did not re- 
assure their minds and becalm their spirits ; but, when they 
were still troubled, terrified, and affrighted, and, notwithstand- 
ing the sight of their eyes, thoughts arose in their hearts, 
Jesus said, " Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I my- 
self; handle me and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones 
as ye see me have. And when he had spoken thus he showed 
them his hands and his feet. And he asked for meat, and 
took it, and did eat before them. "J Rejecting all testimony, 
one of their number then absent averred, "Except I shall see 
in his hand the print of the nails, and put my finger into the 
print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not 
believe."^ What infallible proof could be asked surpassing 
this demand of the incredulous Thomas ? And what infal- 

* See Paley's admirable treatise, Horce Paulina. 

f Mark xvi., 11 , . f Luke xxiv., 39-43. § John xx., 2§, 



THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES 275 

lible proof could be given like the answer of Jesus, when he 
next again stood in the midst of them, " Reach hither thy 
linger, <md behold my hands ; and reach hitherthy hand, and 
thrust it into my side ; and be not faithless, but believing ?"* 
They only believed because they saw. Ignorant they could 
not be whether they had gone down from Jerusalem to Gal- 
ilee in order that, according to his saying announced to the 
disciples, they might see him there. And the very place be- 
ing chosen where he chiefly had sojourned and where he 
was best known, the senses of men could not be deceived 
either in his appearing more publicly to many witnesses or 
privately to a few. His appearing unto five hundred breth- 
ren at once was a fact, the reality of which was its own at- 
testation. And the net which filled with fishes at his word, 
and yet was not broken, betokened the voice of him on whose 
word miracles awaited. And after his resurrection, as be- 
fore his death, he conversed and did eat with his disciples 
on the shore of Galilee as in the city of Jerusalem. And to 
that city, where the sacrifice was made, and from which, ac- 
cording to the prophets, the law was to go forth, they again 
returned. They were commanded to wait there till the prom- 
ise of the Father should be fulfilled and the Spirit be sent. 
They could not but know that from hence they followed Je- 
sus by the way from Jerusalem to Bethany, as they had often 
followed him formerly. And when they could no longer fol- 
low him, they listened to his last words, " Ye shall receive 
power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you : and ye 
shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Ju- 
dea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the 
earth. And when he had spoken these things, while they 
beheld, he was taken up; they looked steadfastly unto heav- 
en as he went up."f The bursting forth anew, after a brief 
suppression, of the Christian religion, its first promulgation 
from Jerusalem, and speedy prevalence in far distant re- 
gions, as Tacitus records, show that the apostles were the 
witnesses of Jesus according to his word. And no facts 
were ever more cognizable by man, nor were any others 
ever witnessed of greater actual influence and efficacy on 
the world, than those by which these witnesses must have 
known that Jesus had ascended into heaven, and was seated 
at the right hand of the Majesty on high. 

The unlettered fishermen of Galilee, whose provincial ac- 
cent betrayed one of their number a few days before in the 
hall of Pilate, could not be ignorant that nothing but the ful- 
filment of the promise of the Father constituted them the 
witnesses of Jesus to all the ends of the earth. They had 

* John xx., 24, 27 f t Luke xxiv., 50. Acts i., 8-10. 



276 THE AUTHENTICITY OP 

other proof than even that of their sight, that, while they f 
were all assembled in one place, cloven tongues like as of 
fire sat upon each of them. Not in unmeaning jargon or un- 
intelligible sounds, which excited imaginations might prompt 
any lips to enunciate, but in the native languages of all who 
were then congregated in Jerusalem, out of every nation from 
Arabia and Parthia to Rome, they spake with other tongues 
as the Spirit gave them utterance. The unfailing trial, and 
actual and continued exercise of power, is an indubitable 
proof of its reality. And when they were endowed with 
the gift of tongues, so adapted, essential, and adequate to the 
execution of their divine commission, the apostles of Jesus 
personally experienced that the purpose for which they 
waited at Jerusalem had been accomplished ; that he whom 
they had seen ascend on high, as had been prophesied of old^ 
had, as the same prophecy bears, received gifts for men. se/e^ 
ing that they themselves had received them according to his ' 
word ; and that the sending of the Spirit was the ratification 4 
of " the promise of the Father," as it had been given both; 
by his prophets and by his Son. Prophecy came not in old 5 
time by the will of man ; but holy men of God. as alf men^ 
may know, spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost-- 
Yet an immediate and palpable illustration was not always ' 
given to them or to others that the word was indeed of God ; ; 
and sometimes they did not even understand the vision, but 
it was sealed until the latter days, in which the fulfilment of 
their word testifies that they spake by inspiration of God, 
But the Spirit was given in another manner and in a larger 
measure to those whom Jesus sent forth to preach his gos« 
pel to all the nations of the earth, than to those by whom the 5 
Lord had spoken to the people under the law. And the com- 
municated power, and its continued visible effects, as well 
as the original visible manifestation, gave irrefragable proof 
that the Spirit which had spoken by the prophets ivroughf 
mightily in the apostles, in a manner that could not possibly 
be misconceived. Many signs and wonders were done by 
them. And they knew, as Jesus had told them, that it was; 
because he ascended up unto the Father that they did the* 
works which they had seen him do. They knew that the- 
power which they themselves received was given them by 
Jesus. And the demonstration of power and of the Spirit 
with which they went forth unto the world was unto them 
a demonstration that all power in heaven and in earth was 
committed unto him ; in whose name they conld not only 
speak in every tongue, and command a man lame from his 
birth to stand up and walk, but also say unto the dead, Arise. 
Their speaking in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them ut- 
terance, was the proof that they were filled with the Holy 
Ghost. And they communicated, fo others the supernatural 



THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 277 

gifts which they had received. One of the most renowned 
among them, the great apostle of the Gentiles, personally 
experienced the eificacy of that miraculous power which, 
during his ministry, he afterward exercised. Of what events- 
could any man be more sensible than Paul must have been 
of the facts which attended his conversion : his persecution 
of Christians, his commission from the high-priest, his jour- 
ney to Damascus, his arrest at midday by a light from heav- 
en and by the voice of Jesus; the question which he asked, 
the answer which he received, and the command which was- 
given him ; his sudden and entire blindness, his being led by 
the hand into the city, his continuing three days without 
sight, during which he did neither eat nor drink ; his seeing 
in a vision a man named Ananias coming in and putting his 
hand on him that he might receive his sight, the entrance 
subsequently of a man into the house where he was, his ac- 
tual feeling of his hands put upon him, his hearing of the 
words, " Erother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared 
unto thee in the way as thou earnest, hath sent me that thou 
mightst receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost;" 
the falling immediately from his open and sightless eyes as 
it had been scales ; his receiving sight forthwith, and behold- 
ing with his eyes the man whom he had seen in a vision ; 
his being baptized, his communing with those as brethren 
whom he had come to persecute, and his straightway preach- 
ing in the synagogue that Christ is the Son of God. What 
clearer demonstration was ever given of any fact unto man 
than was thus given to Paul, that Jesus whom he had perse- 
cuted was the Lord with power! And how could he or the 
other apostles be deceived respecting the reality of the gifts 
with which they were endowed, of the miracles which were 
wrought by their word, and the miraculous power which was 
communicated by the laying on of their hands. 

Deceived they could not be. And were they deceivers 
who renounced their former prejudices, abjured their former 
faith, and left their former calling to preach and to practise 
the doctrine of the cross ; who suffered the loss of all things 
for the sake of one who had been crucified as a malefactor; 
who, as he had foretold them, were hated of all men for his 
name's sake ; who forsook all earthly friends, and forfeited 
all earthly blessings ; and who, if in this life only they had 
hope in Jesus, were of all men the most miserable ; whose 
lives were in jeopardy every hour, and whom bonds and 
afflictions everywhere awaited? Were such things ever 
heard of as the lures of hypocrisy or the wages of deceit? 
Or what shadow of a semblance exists between the acts of 
impostors or deceivers and those of the witnesses of Jesus! 
Were they ascetics who did eat their bread with gladness and 
joyfulness of heart, who gloried in tribulations and rejoiced 

A a 



278 THE AUTHENTICITY OP 

evermore ? Were they misanthropists, who lived as breth- 
ren, loved their enemies, and, as they had opportunity, did 
good unto all men ? Were those men devotees, seeking to 
work out a righteousness of their own, who reprobated such 
a thought as the very rejection of the gospel ] Were they 
self-idolaters, claiming heaven for their virtues or their suf- 
ferings, who were ready to confess themselves the chief of 
sinners, and knew full well that it would profit them nothing 
to give their bodies to be burned, if destitute of charity 
which rejoiceth in the truth 1 Or did they seek to be idolized 
by others, who were held as the offscourings of the earth 
because of their Christian profession, and who, when once 
it was said of them that the gods had come down in the 
likeness of men, rent their clothes and ran in among the 
people, whom, with all their might, they restrained from 
doing sacrifice unto them ? Or did the hope of immortality 
which the gospel reveals prompt these to deception, whose 
creed it was that liars are the children of their father the 
devil, and that whosoever ioveth or maketh a lie shall in no 
wise enter into the kingdom of heaven, but that all liars shall 
have their part in the lake which burnetii with fire and brim- 
stone, which is the second death. 

Amply elucidated as the authenticity of the New Testa- 
ment has been for ages, it is needless to dwell on argu- 
ments which have been reiterated times without number, and 
which, on a glance at the subject, must present themselves 
to every judicious and candid mind. But it may specially 
be remarked that the Christian scriptures, when first penned, 
were not set forth as the oracles of a new religion, but as 
the record of facts that were previously believed in the 
world. The truth of Christianity was attested by the blood 
of martyrs before a word of the New Testament was writ- 
ten. And evangelists first wrote concerning the things which 
were most certainly believed. The very nature of the case 
renders it evident that, if imposition had been attempted by 
the first promulgators of Christianity, it could not have suc- 
ceeded. The gospel was first preached exclusively in Judea 
by Christ and his followers, at the very time and on the very 
scene of the transactions in which it originated. There, at 
the very risk of life and the certain enmity of mankind, it 
was believed by thousands ; and from thence it was speedily 
propagated throughout the world, at a time when frequent 
and regular intercourse subsisted throughout the wide-ex- 
tended provinces of the Roman empire, and when bigoted 
Jews and idolatrous Gentiles were everywhere opposed to 
the doctrine of the cross. While the facts were recent, and 
open to the freest inquiry and the fullest investigation, and 
the alleged miracles visible, and when death was often the 



THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 279 

penalty of faith, nothing less and nothing else than the force 
of truth could constrain multitudes to be willing martyrs. 

That the witnesses of Jesus did not follow a cunningly de- 
vised fable, but spoke the words of truth and soberness, is 
vouched, as we have heretofore seen, by heathen records 
and infidel arguments, which, irrespective of testimony pe- 
culiarly Christian, serve the double purpose of elucidating 
the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies, and confirming 
the authenticity of the New. The universal expectation 
which prevailed over the whole East of the coming of the 
Messiah at the period of the commencement of the Chris- 
tian era ; the origin of Christianity at that time, derived from 
Christ as its author ; the time and the manner of his death, 
or the judicial sentence by which he was cut orT, in the reign 
of Tiberius Csesar, and under the procuratorship of Pontius 
Pilate ; the sudden and brief suppression of his religion ; its 
speedy revival and rapid extension ; its propagation from 
Judea, where it first arose, throughout the Roman empire ; 
its prevalence in the capital of the world, where it numbered 
a vast multitude of adherents within the space of thirty years 
after the death of Christ ; the general hatred in which Chris- 
tians were held, and the savage cruelties to which they were 
subjected ; the scandal attached to the doctrine of the cross ; 
the power of the Gospel, as manifested in the disinterested- 
ness, liberality, patience, devotedness, and mutual love of 
primitive Christians, the holiness of their lives, and their 
faithfulness unto death, and other peculiarities of their char- 
acter and condition, are all explicitly related on unexcep- 
tionable authority, totally independent of that of Scripture. 
These facts relative to the origin of the Christian religion 
not only accord most minutely with the statements of the 
New Testament, and involve many others, as forming the 
result of what evangelists and apostles historically relate 
concerning the origin, nature, and progress of the gospel ; 
but these facts alone, our enemies being judges, exhibit a new 
state of human society unheard of before, a new era in hu- 
man nature, a new conflict with human passions, another 
reign than that of sin in the hearts of the children of men ; 
and thus, also, new phenomena in the moral world which 
heathen moralists could not comprehend, new motives which 
philosophers confessedly could not gauge, and a new principle 
which, without a carnal weapon, prevailed in defiance of all 
human power. If, then, we would trace effects to their 
causes, or consequences to that which preceded them, we may 
naturally look for some history of a new, extraordinary, and 
unparalleled nature, like the facts. These facts are authentic 
and indisputable. And looking solely to the accounts given 
by profane writers of the universal expectation at that very 
time, derived from the ancient books of the Jewish prophets 



280 THE AUTHENTICITY OF 

of the rise of a new kingdom and the coming of a king from 
among the Jews, to whom Nature herself was to give birth; 
of the simultaneous origin of Christianity ; the manner of 
Christ's death ; the novelty, peculiarity, and wonderful effi- 
cacy and progress of his religion ; the persecution of his fol- 
lowers ; their indomitable zeal in propagating his faith ; their 
immoveable adherence to his cause ; the counsel that was 
taken against them by kings and governors, and the variety 
of their sufferings even unto death, it may well be averred 
that those are not very inquisitive after truth who, the inspi- 
ration of the prophets being visibly demonstrated, see not 
good reason from hence for searching the Old Testament 
Scriptures whether these things are so, or whether the proph- 
ets foretold what heathens have thus related. The proof 
lies open to inspection that these are express prophetic char- 
acteristics of the Messiah and of his cause. We read plainly 
in prophecy, and see the counterpart clearly in history, that 
a citizen of Judea was at that very time to set up his king- 
dom, and finally to obtain the dominion; that the predicted 
time " determined upon the people and upon the holy city," 
upon the Jews and Jerusalem, was that which was determined 
also " to finish the transgression, and to make an end of 
sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in 
everlasting righteousness, and to heal up the vision and 
prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy ;"* that the kings of the 
earth would set themselves, and the rulers take counsel to- 
gether, against the Lord and against his anointed ;f that Mes- 
siah the prince was to come and be cut off, but not for himself, 
before the city and the sanctuary should be destroyed, and 
that the end thereof would be with a flood, to be succeeded 
by the desolations that were determined ; that the Messiah 
would confirm the covenant with many, and that the sacri- 
fice and oblation, which had been offered up for ages, should 
cease, and the desolation ensue which was to continue even 
till the consummation ; and that, coincident with the taking 
away of the daily sacrifice and placing the abomination which 
maketh desolate, when the covenant should be established 
with many, the people that knew their God should be strong, 
and that they who understood among the people should in- 
struct many, and fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, 
and by spoil many days. J 

Still more abundant confirmations of the authenticity of 
the New Testament and of the Messiahship of Jesus might 
be drawn from the arguments of the earliest as well as the 
latest antagonists of the Christian faith, who thought that it 
could be reasoned down when no other power could prevail 
against it. The reader is aware that these are neither few 

* Pan. ix., 24. f Ps. ii., 21. % Dan. ix., 25-27 ; xi., 33. 



THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 281 

nor unimportant : and, if anything can be held as common 
ground, it may well be those facts on which the arguments 
of our adversaries are founded. If from the earliest ages 
they have reasoned from many Scriptural truths, without the 
power of denial, or even the expression of a doubt, then, 
upon their own showing, these facts pertain to believers as 
well as unto them. And if they, according to their fancy, 
have tried from thence to disprove the divinity of our faith, 
there is no reason to restrain us from proving, according to 
the word of God by the prophets, that these selfsame facts 
are demonstrations that it is Divine. The " foolishness of 
God," or that which man in his blindness reckons to be folly, 
is wiser than men. Man naturally dwells in darkness, not 
in light. But God dwelleth in the light; and in him is no 
darkness at all. " It behooved him in whom are all things, 
and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto 
glory, to make the Captain of our salvation perfect through 
sufferings." And that such was his purpose, prophets had 
foretold. But man, looking to the things that are seen, had 
lost the right apprehension of things spiritual and divine, and 
judged of them according to his earthly mind. To the proud 
spirit of the imperious Roman nothing could seem more re- 
volting, and in the view of the speculative Greek nothing 
could appear more foolish, worshippers as they were of hero- 
gods, and devoted to a splendid and attractive paganism, than 
that the messenger of Heaven should assume the form of a 
servant ; that a man lowly in heart should be esteemed a 
pattern of virtue ; that salvation to all nations should come 
from among the Jews, or that the Son of God, in appearing 
among those who had rebelled against his Father, should 
come, not to take away men's lives, but to lay down his own 
for their sakes. It is not to be wondered at that they, who 
knew no glory but the pride of life, took up against Chris- 
tians the scandal of the cross ; and experience forbids that 
it should be matter of surprise that skeptics respond uncon- 
sciously to the voice of prophets. He who has eyes to see 
may here, as elsewhere, see how objections become proofs, 
and how perversely arguments yield an opposite demonstra- 
tion. The facts from which Christians were to be confuted 
out of their own writings need not be repeated, but may be 
read in the words of evangelists and prophets, and have their 
just and proper bearing on the Christian evidence, when 
placed side by side with the prophecies, where they harmo- 
niously form the testimony of the enemies as well as the 
witnesses of Jesus, and the testimony which God has given 
of his Son. Pagan historians having recorded facts con- 
cerning Christ which prophets beforehand testified of him, 
and those very things which chiefly constitute the propheti- 
cally anticipated history of the Messiah having been adduce^ 
Aa2 



282 THE AUTHENTICITY, ETC, 

and adopted by the ablest defenders of paganism, and the 
genuineness and authenticity of the New Testament, as of 
the Old, being confirmed by many irrefragable proofs— what 
reason can there be for not completing the comparison, ex- 
cept the iniquitous fear of conviction in the minds of those 
who desire not the knowledge of the ways of the Lord 1 

The Christian religion exists, and its conformity with the 
testimony of the prophets may be tried. There is not an- 
other book in the world so generaily diffused, or that can be 
read in so many languages, as either the Old Testament or 
the New. The inspiration of the prophets is as cognizable 
now by many nations as it ever was among any of the tribes 
of Israel : for the facts which confirm it pertain to the his- 
tory of the world, and may be known or seen by all men ; 
and the doctrines of the gospel of Jesus, whether their Divine 
origin be admitted or not, are as peculiar, compared with all 
that was ever else taught by man, as are the Jews among all 
the nations of the earth. Never man spake like Jesus ; 
never men wrote like his apostles. It was, indeed, a new 
doctrine which they taught. It has never been ascribed to 
any other. It is clearly discriminated from all besides. The 
doctrines and dictates of the gospel are known and recog- 
nised as such, whether scoffed at by gainsayers or believed 
by Christians. And it stands up to this day as its own wit- 
ness, not only that it is. the truth to those who hear it, but 
that it is the doctrine of the Messiah to those who will ex- 
amine it. Unchanged since its origin, and ever unchange- 
able, and fixed beyond the power of man to alter it, without 
a thousand confutations from every quarter, the New Testa- 
ment may be compared text with text, or word with word, 
in all its essential principles or doctrines, with the Old, in 
order to see whether it, and it alone, bears the character of 
the New Covenant, which was to succeed the disannulling 
of the Old; whether it reveals the everlasting righteousness 
which the Messiah was to bring in ; whether it contains in 
itself a germe of blessedness for " all the families of the 
earth ;" and whether its free course and final extension 
would not be for " the healing of the nations." Simply from 
its distinctive character and exclusive marks, the doctrine 
of the gospel may be compared with the testimony of the 
prophets at the present hour, as well as it could have been 
at the time when the men of Thessalonica, with that intent, 
searched the Old Testament Scriptures: and every Gentile 
may now inquire, as well as any Jew of old, whether the 
New Testament harmonizes with the Old, and whether the 
latter confirms or confutes it, as either unfolding the prom- 
ised salvation, or falsely pretending to be the gospel of the 
Messiah. While the lapse of ages has thrown back the light 
of truth upon the most ancient oracles of God, and while the 



TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS. 283 

gospel has survived all opposition for eighteen hundred 
years, the claim to a fair comparison between the one and 
the other has been strengthened by time ; and that com- 
parison, in respect to doctrine, may now be made as com- 
petently as ever it could have been : and fearlessly and freely 
as a Christian may here challenge any adversary of the 
gospel to show any discrepance or discordance between the 
Old Testament and the New, he has a right, on his own 
part, to take up the one in the one hand, and the other in the 
other, and, reading the prophetic annunciations of the good 
tidings of great joy, and of the light that, springing from Ju- 
dea, was to arise upon the nations and to outlast the desola- 
tions of many generations, to affirm, these words of Scrip- 
ture, as well as others, have been fulfilled ; for while these 
are blessings which God did promise, this is what God hath 
given. 



CHAPTER IX. 

TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS TO THE MESSIAHSH1P OF JESUS. 

Having, in a merely historical view, traced back Christian- 
ity to its origin, and having seen, from the conjunct testimony 
of heathens and of believers, that the New Testament which 
we now possess formed the original Christian writings, and 
contains the record of the history and of the faith of Christ, 
the demonstration may be speedily brought to a close, that 
it forms, no less than the Old, the oracles of divine truth, and 
incontrovertibly bears supernatural attestation to the super- 
natural events which it records ; sufficient in all reason to 
substantiate the doctrine which it contains as being, to the 
full assurance of the faith which it exacts, the unerring word 
of the living God. 

We have seen how the case of experience against miracles 
has been settled on the confession of experience itself; and 
we have not only proef of a miracle, but, while the natural 
world produces evidence on our side, we see that, as pertain- 
ing to sentient and rational beings, there is a law, even a 
written law, in the moral world, and a book of the Lord in 
which it is contained, to the unerring certainty of which 
every inflicted judgment gives attestation alike full and fear- 
ful, and which, in literal fulfilment of manifold predictions, 
is established by a "uniform and unalterable experience." 

There being experience of the truth of a miracle, and that 
God has altered the laws which he had made, the argument 



284 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

of our adversary is therefore inapplicable to Lis purpose, 
false in principle, and only true to its predicted character. 
But there is no experience that the word of God has re- 
turned to him void, or has failed to fulfil the purpose for 
which he sent it. In the punishment of impenitent nations, 
the council of the Lord stands confirmed to the world, as he 
revealed it to his servants the prophets. Our appeal is to 
their testimony. For God surely has shown sufficient cause, 
by the sentences which he has passed and executed on the 
earth, according to the verdicts which he pronounced by 
them, that they have to be heard as the heralds of his great 
salvation, as well as of the desolation which came as de- 
struction from the Almighty. The spirit of prophecy, which 
gave forth the anticipated history of the world, and which 
pointed to cities in their utmost desolation while yet they 
blazoned in all the pride of their power, has never been 
known to lie ; and predicted judgments have been fulfilled 
to the very letter, till the truth of every jot and tittle has 
been confirmed by its effect. And it would be to gainsay an 
established law, paramount to all human power, confirmed 
from generation to generatio#, and still maintaining its irre- 
sistible authority over all the movements of the political and 
moral world, to deny what the prophets have spoken, or to 
maintain that the fallibility of human testimony is attacha- 
ble to the word that is proved to be Divine. 

The measure of the iniquity of the Jews was full when 
they rejected and crucified the Lord of life, and would not 
know the time of their visitation. But though repentance 
would have averted wrath, no iniquity of theirs, itself pre- 
dicted, could have frustrated the Divine purpose of redemp- 
tion which was decreed from the beginning, and enunciated 
in Eden so soon as sin had entered into the world, and 
was repeated from age to age, in irrepealable promises 
and pledges, by the word of the Lord to all the prophets of 
Israel. On this sure ivord of prophecy — of the unchangeable- 
ness of which all changes on earth give token, and the sta- 
bility of which the revolutions of empires, and the ruins of 
cities declare — rests the testimony of Jesus ; and greatly is 
that testimony traduced or disparaged when it is held as en- 
tirely dependant for its validity on any councils or actions 
of men, or as substantiated solely by human testimony un- 
accompanied by Divine. 

The testimony of the prophets, by whose mouth He 
spoke, is the testimony of God. Their w r ord is the demon- 
stration of the Spirit by whose inspiration it was given. 
They did not speak, for they could not have spoken as 
they did, out of the imaginations of their own hearts ; nor 
could any other voice but that of the Lord give utterance to 
those things which they were chosen to record. That hisf 



TO THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 285 

truth endureth from generation to generation is not merely 
an opinion to be believed, but a fact to be seen ; and, on a 
moment's reflection, is as clear to the mind's eye as are the 
ruins of Babylon, or the empty dwellings in the clefts of 
Petra to those who behold them, or the sight of a Jew to 
any passer-by in any country under heaven. True is the 
word which the Lord hath spoken, and which he has fully 
confirmed as his own ; and the whole power of this testi- 
mony still bears the stronger on the Messiahship of Jesus, 
as new illustrations arise to the present hour that they who 
testified of him were the prophets of the Highest. Freed 
as now we are from the prejudices of the Jews, we are nei- 
ther bewildered by the traditions of the lawyers, nor tram- 
melled by the interpretation of the scribes, nor awed by the 
judgment of a doctor of the law, nor biased by the authority 
of a covetous Pharisee, who all looked for a temporal Mes- 
siah, and, groaning as they were under the Roman yoke, ex- 
pected a kingdom of this world, and hoped, not so much that 
a sceptre of righteousness would finally be swayed over all 
the world, as that the sceptre of Judah would be raised 
above that of the Caesars. But> with the history of twenty- 
three centuries before us, since the sealing up of the Old 
Testament Scriptures, during which period prophetic history 
has run its unfailing and still unfinished course, and also 
with the whole Bible open to our view, all the words of the 
prophets being not only placed within our hearing, but 
put within our hands, each man who seeks for the truth 
may search for himself whether these things are so ; whether 
Jesus was, did, and suffered w T hat the Messiah was to be, 
to do, and to bear, and whether those very things recorded 
in the New Testament, which skeptics have most cavilled 
at, be not essential and clear credentials of the Divine ori- 
gin of Christianity, the very counterpart of the testimony of 
God to the Messiahship of Jesus. So far are we from giving 
heed to an incredible tale by searching into the history 
of Jesus of Nazareth, that we are looking only for the ac- 
complishment of the word of God by the prophets, the ful- 
filment of his numerous promises, and the redemption of 
his repeated pledges, nay, even for the confirmation of that 
oath which he had sworn. If there be anything credible on 
earth, anything resting on amore sure word than that of man, 
anything of which there was a previous presumptive proof, 
as there hence actually was a universal expectation at the 
time, it is this. Men, in the inveteracy of their disbelief 
of a doctrine according to godliness, may deem it wisdom 
to reject any human testimony bearing witness to truths 
professedly Divine. But surely reason would be renounced, 
and conscience must be seared, and man must be held ac- 
countable for his unbelief, if the accredited testimony of 



286 TESTIMONY OF THJ3 PROPHETS 

God be rejected. And what else than the veriest fools are 
they who are slow of heart to believe what the prophets have 
spoken, though set before them by evidence at once complete 
and unparalleled. 

This testimony of God by the prophets, which, according 
to a precept of Jesus, forms among Christians a familiar 
theme, could not be fully adduced and adequately illustrated 
in many volumes. But, like the proofs of the inspiration of 
the prophets, a simple parallelism, without a word of ex- 
planation, may suffice to show that the testimony is abun- 
dant, that the harmony is complete, and that the Father him- 
self hath borne witness of Jesus. 

In thee (Abraham) shall all The book of the generation 
families of the earth be bless- of Jesus Christ, the son of 
ed. — Gen. xii., 4. In thy Abraham. — Mat. i., 1. Ye are 
seed shall all the nations of the children of the prophets, 
the earth be blessed. — Gen. and of the covenant which God 
xxii., 18; xxviii., 14 ; viii., made with our fathers, saying 
18. unto Abraham, And in thy seed 

shall all the kindreds of the 

earth be blessed. — Acts hi., 25. 
And the Lord appeared God, willing more abundant- 
unto him (Isaac), and said, I ly to show unto the heirs of 
will perform the oath which promise the immutability of 
I sware unto Abraham thy his counsel, confirmed it by an 
father : and in thy seed shall oath ; that by two immutable 
all the nations of the earth things, in which it was impos- 
be blessed. — Gen. xxvi., 2,4. sible for God to lie, we might 

have a strong consolation, &c. 

—Heb. vi., 17, 18. 

As for Ishmael, I have Neither, because they are 

heard thee ; but my cove- the seed of Abraham, are they 

nant will I establish with all children: but, In Isaac shall 

Isaac. — Gen* xvii., 20, 21. thy seed be called. — Rom. ix., 

7, &c. 
I am the Lord God of Who are Israelites ; to whom 
Abraham thy father, and the pertaineth the adoption, and 
God of Isaac ; and in thee the covenants, and the prom- 
(Jacob) and in thy seed shall ises : whose are the fathers, 
all the families of the earth and of whom, as concerning 
be blessed. — Gen. xxviii., 14. the flesh, Christ came. — Rom. 

ix., 4, 5. 
Judah, thou art he whom It is evident that our Lord 
thy brethren shall praise: sprang out of Judah. — Heb. vii., 
the sceptre shall not de- 14. Salvation is of the Jews, 
part from Judah until Shiloh — John iv., 22. The lion of the 
come. — Gen. xlix., 8, 10. tribe of Judah, the root of Da- 
The genealogy is not to be vid, hath prevailed to open the 
reckoned after the birthright, book, Sic— Rev. v., 5, 



tO THE MESSlAHSHIP OF JESUS. 



28? 



for Judah prevailed above 
his brethren, and of him the 
chief ruler. — 1 Ch. v., 1, 2. 

The Lord thy God will 
raise up unto thee a prophet 
from the midst of thee, of 
thy brethren, like unto me 
(Moses) ; and unto him ye 
shall hearken, &c. — Deut. 
xviii., 15. 

There shall come forth a 
rod out of the stem of Jesse, 
and a branch shall grow out 
of his roots : There shall be 
a root of Jesse, &c. — Isa. xi., 
1, 10. 

1 have sworn unto David 
my servant, thy seed will 
I establish for ever. — Ps. 
lxxxix., 3, 4, 27, &c. I will 
raise unto David a righteous 
branch, &c. — Jer. xxiii., 5 ; 
xxxiii., 15. 

It {the seed of the woman) 
shall bruise thy (the ser- 
pent's) head, &c. — Gen. iii., 
15. 

The Lord hath created a 
new thing in the earth : A 
woman shall compass a man. 
— Jer. xxxi., 22. Behold, a 
virgin shall conceive and 
bear a Son, 



Arid shall call his name Im- 
manuel. — Isa. vii., 14. 



A great prophet is risen up 
among us. — Luke vii., 16. This 
is of a truth that prophet that 
should come into the world. — 
John vi., 14. 



Esaias saith, there shall be a 
root of Jesse, and he that shall 
rise to reign over the Gentiles. 
— Rom. xv., 12; Mat. i., 5, 16. 
To David also he gave testi- 
mony, and said, I have found 
David the son of Jesse. 

Of this man's seed hath God, 
according to his promise, rais- 
ed unto Israel a Saviour, Je- 
sus. — Acts xiii., 23 ; ii., 30. 
Luke i.. 32. 



When the fulness of the 
time was come, God sent forth 
his Son, made of a woman, 
made under the law, &c. — Gal. 
iv., 4. 

Then said Mary unto the an- 
gel, how shall this be, seeing 
1 know not a man ? And the 
angel answered and said unto 
her, the Holy Ghost shall come 
upon thee, and the power of 
the Highest shall overshadow 
thee : therefore also that holy 
thing, which shall be born of 
thee, shall be called the Son of 
God. — Luke i., 34, 35. 

Now all this was done that 
it might be fulfilled which was 
spoken of by the prophet, say- 
ing, Behold, a virgin shall be 
with child, and shall bring 
forth a son, and they shall call 
his name Emmanuel, which, 
being interpreted, is God with 
us.— Mat. i., 22, 23. 



2S8 TESTIMONY 0$ fHE PROPHETS 

Thou, Beth-lehem Ephra- Jesus was born in Bethle- 
tah, though thou be little hem of Judea, in the days of 
among the thousands of Ju- Herod the king, &c. — Mat. ii., 
dah, yet out of thee shall he 1 ; Luke ii., 11. 
come forth unto me that is 
to be ruler in Israel; 

Whose goings forth have In the beginning was the 
been of old, from everlast- Word : The same was in the 
ing. — Micah v., 2. He shall beginning with God. — Johni., 
be called The Lord (Jehovah) 1, 2. Jesus Christ the same 
our Righteousness. — Jerem. yesterday, and to-day, and for 
xxiii., 6. ever. — Heb. xiii., 8. 

Unto us a child is born, The Word was with God, 
unto us a son is given ; and and the Word was God: The 
the government shall be up- Word was made flesh, and 
on his shoulder : and his dwelt among us. — John i., 1, 
name shall be called Won- 14. Unto you is born this day, 
d erf ul, Counsellor, The migh- in the city of David, a Saviour, 
ty God, The everlasting Fa- which is Christ the Lord. — 
ther (or the Father of the Luke ii., 11. 
everlasting age), The Prince 
of Peace, &c. — Isa. ix., 6. 

I will declare the decree : We beheld his glory, the glo- 
The Lord hath said unto me, ry as of the only begotten of 
Thou art my son; this day the Father, full of grace and 
have I begotten thee. — Ps. truth.— Johni., 14. He shall be 
ii., 7. called the Son of the Highest. 

—Luke i., 32. 
Awake, O sword, against Christ Jesus, who, being in 
my shepherd, and against the the form of God, thought it not 
man that is my fellow, saith robbery to be equal with God, 
the Lord of Hosts. — Zech. was made in the likeness of 
xiii., 7. men. — Phil, ii., 6, 7. Great is 

the mystery of godliness : God 
was manifest in the flesh, &c. 
—1 Tim. hi., 16. 
In the days of these kings In those days came John the 
(or empires, of which the Ro- Baptist, saying, Repent ye, for 
man was the last) shall the the kingdom of heaven is at 
God of heaven set up a king- hand.— Mat. hi., 1, 2. The king- 
dom — Dan. ii., 44. dom of heaven is like to a grain 

of mustard-seed, which, when it 

is grown, is the greatest among 

herbs.— Mat. xiii., 31, 32. 

The Desire of all nations Simeon came by the Spirit 

shall come, and I will fill this into the temple : and when the 

house with glory, saith the parents brought in the child Je- 

Lord of Hosts. — Hag. ii., 7. sus, he blessed God, and said, 

Mine eyes have seen thy sal- 
vation, which thou hast prepa- 



TO THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 289 

red before the face of all people 

Sic— Luke ii., 27-31. 

I will raise them up a pro- Jesus answered them and 

phet, and will put my words said, My doctrine is not mine, 

in his mouth. — Deut. xviii., but his that sent me. — John vii., 

18. 16. He whom God hath sent 

speaketh the words of God. — 

John hi., 34. 

And he shall speak unto For I have not spoken of my- 

them all that I shall command self; but the Father which sent 

him. — Deut. xviii., 18. me, he gave me a commandment, 

what I should say, and what I 

should speak. — John xii., 49. 

All things that I have heard of 

my Father I have made known 

unto you. — John xv., 15. 

LOjIcome: in the volume I came down from heaven, 

of the book it is written of not to do mine own will, but the 

me, I delight to do thy will, will of him that sent me. — John 

O my God; yea, thy law is vi., 38. Jesus saith unto them, 

within my heart. — Ps. xl., My meat is to do the will of 

7, 8. him that sent me, and to finish 

his work. — John iv., 34. 
Who hath believed our re- He came unto his own, and 
port (Heb. hearing, or doc- his own received him not. — 
trine), and to whom is the John i., 11. Though he had 
arm of the Lord revealed ; done so many miracles before 
he is rejected. — Isa. liii., 1, 3. them, yet they believed not on 

him. — John xii., 37. 
For he shall grow up be- He hath regarded the lowes- 
fore him as a tender plant, tate of his handmaiden: he hath 
and as a root out of a dry exalted them of low degree. — 
ground : he hath no form nor Luke i., 48, 52. Is not this the 
comeliness; and when we carpenter, the son of Mary? 
shall see him there is no beau- and they were offended at him. 
ty that we should desire him. — Mark vi., 3. For unto you is 
— Isa, liii., 2. born this day, in the City of Da- 

vid, a Saviour, which is Christ 
the Lord. And this shall be a 
sign unto you: Ye shall find 
the babe wrapped in swad- 
dling-clothes, lying in a man- 
ger. — Luke ii., 11, 12. 
He (my messenger) shall Jesus went away again be- 
prepare the way before me. yond Jordan, into the place 
— Mai. hi., 1. He shall turn where John at first baptized; 
the heart of the fathers to and there he abode. And many 
the children, and the heart resorted unto him, and said, 
of the children to their fa- John did no miracle : but all 

Bb 



290 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

thers. — Mai. iv., 6. Prepare things that John spake of this 
ye the way of the Lord, make man were true. And many be- 
straight in the desert a high- lieved on him there. — John x., 
way for our God. — Isa. xl., 3. 40, 42. 

Behold my servant whom I He took upon him the form 
uphold, of a servant. — Phil, ii., 7. Je- 

sus Christ was a minister of 
the circumcision for the truth 
of God. — Rom. xv., 8. 
Mine elect in whom my soul Lo, a voice from Heaven, say- 
delighteth ; ing, This is my beloved Son, in 

whom I am well pleased. — Mat. 
iii., 17. 
I have put my Spirit upon The heavens were opened 
him. — Isa. xlii., 1. unto him, and he saw the Spirit 

of God descending like a dove, 
and lighting upon him. — Mat. 
iii., 16. 
The Spirit of the Lord shall He whom God hath sent* 
rest upon him. — Isa. xl., 2. speaketh the words of God : 

for God giveth not the Spirit 
by measure unto him. — John 
iii., 34. 
The rulers take counsel to- We have found the Messias, 
gether against the Lord and which is, being interpreted, the 
against his anointed. — Ps. ii., Christ (or the anointed).— Jo hn 
2. I have ordained a lamp for i., 41. I know that Messias 
mine anointed. — lb. cxxxv., cometh, which is called Christ. 
17. To anoint the Most Ho- This is indeed the Christ, the 
ly : The Messiah, The Prince. Saviour of the world. — John iv., 
— Dan. ix., 24, 25. God, thy 25, 42. The high priest asked 
God, hath anointed thee with him, and said unto him, Art 
the oil of gladness above thy thou the Christ, the Son of the 
fellows. — Ps. xlv., 7 ; Isa. Blessed I And Jesus said, 1 am. 
Ixi., 1; J?s. lxxxix., 20, 51; — Mark xiv., 61, 62. Ofatruth, 
Mat. xvL, 16; xxvi., 63, 64; against thy holy child Jesus, 
John\i., 69; xi.,27; Acts ii., whom thou hast anointed, both 
36 ; ix., 22 ; xvii., 3. Herod and Pontius Pilate, with 

the Gentiles, and the people of 
Israel, were gathered together, 
for to do whatsoever thy hand 
and thy counsel determined be- 
fore to be done. — Acts iv., 27, 
28. 
The Spirit of the Lord God There was delivered unto 
is upon me ; because the Lord him the book of the Prophet 
hath anointed me, &c. Esaias : and, when he had 

opened the book, he found the 
place where it was written, 



TO THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 291 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon 
me, because he hath anointed 
me to preach the gospel to the 
poor, &c. And he began to say 
unto them, This day is the 
scripture fulfilled in your ears. 
— Luke iv., 17-21. 
The Lord hath anointed me The poor have the gospel 
to preach good tidings unto (good tidings) preached to them, 
the* meek : — Mat. xi. , 5. He went through- 

out every city and village, 
'preaching and showing the glad 
tidings of the kingdom of God. 
— Luke viii., 1. 
He hath sent me to bind up Come unto me, all ye that la- 
the broken hearted, bour and are heavy laden, and 

I will give you rest. — Mat, xi., 
28. 
To proclaim liberty to the Whosoever committeth sin 
captives, and the opening of is the {dovlog, slave) servant of 
the prison to them that are sin. If the Son, therefore, shall 
bound ; make you free, ye shall be free 

indeed. — John viii., 34, 36. 
Stand fast, therefore, in the 
liberty wherewith Christ hath 
made us free, and be not entan- 
gled again with the yoke of 
• bondage. — Gal. v., 1. 
To proclaim the acceptable If thou hadst known, even 
year of the Lord, thou, at least, in this thy day, 

the things which belong unto 
thy peace. — Luke xix. , 42. We 
then, as workers together with 
Christ, beseech you that ye re- 
ceive not the grace of God in 
vain. Behold, now is the ac- 
cepted time ; behold, now is the 
day of salvation. — 2 Cor. vi., 
1,2. 
And the day of vengeance of For the days shall come upon 
our God ; thee that thine enemies shall 

lay thee even with the ground, 
&c, because thou knewest not 
the time of thy visitation. — 
Luke xix., 43, 44. For these 
be the days of vengeance, that 
all things which are written 
may be fulfilled. — Luke xxi., 22. 
To comfort all that mourn ; Blessed are they that mourn ; 



292 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

for they shall be comforted. — 
Mat. v., 4. 
To appoint unto them that Blessed are ye when men 
mourn in Zion, to give unto shall persecute you, &c. Re- 
them beauty for ashes, the joice, and be exceeding glad; 
oil of joy for mourning, the for great is your reward in 
garment of praise for the heaven, &c, v. 11, 12. I am 
spirit of heaviness. — Isa. Ixi., exceeding joyful in all our trib- 
1,2,3. illation. — 2 Cor. vii., 4. We 

glory in tribulations also. — 
Rom. v., 3. 
The Spirit of the Lord shall He knew what was in man. 
rest upon him, the spirit of — John vi., 25. All that heard 
wisdom and understanding, him were astonished at his un- 
the spirit of counsel and derstanding and answers. — 
might, the spirit of knowl- Luke ii., 47. Christ the power 
edge, o( God and the wisdom of God. 

—1 Cor. i., 24. 
And of the fear of the Lord ; I will forewarn you whom ye 

shall fear : Fear him which, 
after he hath killed, hath power 
to cast into hell ; yea, 1 say un- 
to you, Fear him. — Luke xii., 5. 
Christ was heard, in that he 
feared. — Heb. v., 7. 
And shall make him of quick No man was able to answer 
understanding in the fear of him a word ; neither durst any 
the Lord; man^isk him any more ques- 

tions. — Mat. xxii., 46. Mark 
xii., 34. 
And he shall not judge after When thou wast under the 
the sight of his eyes, fig-tree I saw thee. — John i., 

48. This poor widow hath cast 
in more than all they which 
have cast into the treasury. — 
Mark xii., 43. Judge not ac- 
cording to the appearance, but 
judge righteous judgment.— 
John vii,, 24. 
Neither reprove after tfee And Jesus, knowing their 
hearing of his ears, — Isa, ri., thoughts, said, Wherefore think 
2, 3. * ye evil in your hearts 1 — Mat. 

xi.,4. He that dippeth his hand 

with me in the dish, the same 

shall betray me. — Mat. xxvi., 

23. 

He shall not cry, nor lift His brethren said unto him, 

up, nor cause his voice to be Depart hence, and go into Ju- 

heard in the street. dea, that thy disciples also may 



TO THE MESSIAHSH1P OF JESUS. 293 

see the works that thou doest. 
If thou do these things, show 
thyself to the world. But he 
went up unto the feast, not 
openly, but as it were in secret. 
—John vii., 3-10. When the 
Lord knew how the Pharisees 
had heard that Jesus made and 
baptized more disciples than 
John, he left Judea, and de- 
parted again unto Galilee. — 
John iv., 1-3. And he charged 
them that they should tell no 
man. — Mat. vii., 36. 
A bruised reed shall he not A woman which was a sin- 
break, ner, stood at his feet behind 

him weeping, and began to 
wash his feet with tears, and 
did wipe them with the hairs of 
her head, and kissed his feet, 
and anointed them with the 
ointment. And he said unto 
her, Thy sins are forgiven. 
Thy faith hath saved thee ; go 
in peace. — Luke vii., 38, 48, 50. 
And the smoking (or dimly Mary sat at Jesus' feet, and 
burning) flax shall he not heard his word, but Martha 
quench. — Isa. xlii., 2, 3. came to him and said, Lord, 

i bid her that she help me ; and 

Jesus answered, One thing is 
needful : and Mary hath chosen 
that good part which shall not 
be taken away from her. — Luke 
x., 40, 42. Him that cometh 
unto me I will in no wise cast 
out. — John vi., 37. 
Ho, every one that thirst- Blessed be they who do hun- 
eth, come ye to the waters, ger and thirst after righteous- 
and he that hath no money : ness ; for they shall be filled. — 
come ye, buy and eat; yea, Mat, v., 6. Whosoever drink- 
come, buy wine and milk eth of the water that I shall 
without money and without give him, shall never thirst, &c. 
price. — Isa. Iv., 1. — John iv., 14. In the last day, 

that great day of the feast, Je- 
sus stood and cried, saying, If 
any man thirst, let him come 
unto me and drink. — John vii., 
37. 
Wherefore do ye spend mon- Labour not for the meat 

Bb2 



294 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

ey for that which is not bread? which perisheth, but for that 
and your labour for that meat which endureth unto ever- 
which satisneth not 1 heark- lasting life, which the Son of 
en diligently unto me, and man shall give unto you. — John 
eat ye that which is good, vi., 27. I am the living bread 
and let your soul delight it- which came down from heaven, 
self in fatness, v. 2. v. 51. The words that I speak 

unto you, they are spirit and 
they are life, v. 63. 
Incline your ear, and come Let these sayings sink down 
unto me: hear, and your soul into your ears. — Luke ix., 44. 
shall live ; and I will make My sheep hear my voice, and 
an everlasting covenant with I know them, and they follow 
you, even the sure mercies me : and I give unto them eter- 
of David, v. 3. nal life ; and they shall never 

perish, &c. — John x., 27, 28. 
Behold, I have given him for For this cause came I into 
a witness to the people. — the world, that I should bear 
Isa. lv., 4. witness unto the truth. — John 

xviii., 37. 
Thou art fairer than the He was transfigured before 
children of men ; them, and his face did shine as 

the sun, and his raiment was 
white as the light. — Mat. xvii., 
2. Never man spake like this 
man. — John vii., 46. Truly this 
was the Son of God. — Mat. 
xxvii., 54. 
Grace is poured into thy All wondered at the gracious 
lips. — Psalm xlv., 2. words which proceeded out of 

his mouth. — Luke iv., 22. Of 
his fulness have all we receiv- 
ed, and grace for grace. Grace 
and truth came by Jesus Christ. 
— Johni., 16, 17. 
Thou lovest righteousness, My meat is to do the will of 

him that sent me, and to finish 
his work. — John iv., 34. Who- 
soever shall do the will of my 
Father which is in heaven, the 
same is my brother, and sister, 
and mother. — Mat. xii., 50. 
Andhatest iniquity, v. 7. He turned, and said unto Pe- 

ter, Get thee behind me, Satan, 
thou art an offence unto me : 
for thou savourest not the 
things that be of God, but those 
that be of men. — Mat. xvi., 23. 
Then will I profess unto them,. 



TO TUB MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 295 

I never knew you. Depart from 
me, ye that work iniquity. — 
Mat. vii., 23. 
He hath done no violence, Pilate said, I find no fault in 

this man. — Luke xxiii., 4. Ju- 
das said, I have sinned, in that 
I have betrayed the innocent 
blood. — Mat. xxvii., 4. Holy, 
harmless, undefiled, separate 
from sinners. — Heb. vii., 26. 
Neither was any deceit in his Who did no sin, neither was 
mouth. — Isa. liii., 9. guile found in his mouth: who, 

when he was reviled, reviled 

not again ; when he suffered he 

threatened not. — 1 Pet. ii., 22, 

23. 

I will set up one shepherd I am the good shepherd. 

over them, and he shall feed By me if any man enter in, he 

them, even my servant Da- shall be saved, and shall go in 

vid, he shall feed them, and and out, and find pasture. The 

he shall be their shepherd, good shepherd giveth his life 

— Ezek.xxxiv.,23. He shall for the sheep. — John x., 9, 11, 

feed his flock like a shepherd. 14. He calleth his own sheep 

— Isa. xl., 11. by name, and leadeth them out. 

And when he putteth forth his 
own sheep, he goeth before 
them, and the sheep follow him, 
&c. — lb., ver. 3, 4. Our Lord 
Jesus, that great Shepherd of 
the sheep. — Heb. xiii., 20. 1 
Peter ii., 25; v., 1, 2, 4. 
And David my servant shall There shall be one fold and 
be king over them ; and they one shepherd. — John x., 16. 
shall have one shepherd. — 
Ezek. xxxvii. 

He shall gather the lambs Suffer the little children to 
with his arm, and carry them come unto me, and forbid them 
in his bosom. — Isa. xl., 11. not. He took them up in his 

arms, and put his hands upon 
them, and blessed them. — Mark 
x., 14-16. Simon, son of Jo- 
nas, lovest thou me — Feed my 
lambs. — John xvi., 15. 
Blessed is he that cometh And a very great multitude 
in the name of the Lord. — spread their garments in the 
Psalm cxviii., 26. way; others cut. down branches 

from the trees and strewed 

Rejoice greatly, daugh- them in the way. Andthemul- 

ter of Zion ; shout, daugh- titudes that w r ent before, and 



296 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

terof Jerusalem: behold, thy that followed, cried, saying, 
king cometh unto thee : he Hosanna to the son of David : 
is just, and having salvation ; Blessed is he that cometh in 

the name of the Lord ; Hosan- 
na in the highest. — Mat xxi., 8, 

9. Blessed be the kingdom of 
our father David. — Mark xi., 

10. Blessed be he that cometh 
in the name of the Lord. — Mark 
xi., 9. 

Lowly, and riding upon an And the disciples brought the 
ass; and upon a colt the foal ass, and the colt, and put on 
of an ass. — Zech. ix., 9. them their clothes, and they set 

him thereon. — Mat. xxi., 7. 
The Lord, whom ye seek, And Jesus entered into Jeru- 
shall suddenly come to his salem, and into the temple. — 
temple, even the messenger Mark xi., 11. And he taught 
of the covenant, whom ye daily in the temple. — Lukexix., 
delight in : behold, he shall 47. 
come, saith the Lord of Hosts. 
— Mai. hi., 1. 

The zeal of thine house And Jesus went into the tem- 
hath eaten me up. — Psalm pie of God, and cast out all 
lxix.,9. He is like a refiner's them that sold and bought in 
fire ; he shall sit as a refiner the temple, and overthrew the 
and purifier of silver, &c. — tables of the money-changers, 
Mai. hi., 2, 3. and the seats of them that sold 

doves. — Mat. xxi., 12. When 

he had made a scourge of small 

cords, he drove them all out of 

j^ the temple. — John ii., 15. 

The eyes of the blind shall Go, and show John again 

be opened, and the ears of those things which ye do hear 

the deaf shall be unstopped ; and see : the blind receive their 

then shall the lame man leap sight, and the lame walk ; the 

as a hart, and the tongue of lepers are cleansed, and the 

the dumb sing. — ha. xxxv., deaf hear; the dead are raised 

5,6. The deaf shall hear the up. — Mat. xi., 5. And Jesus 

words of the book, and the went about all Galilee, healing 

eyes of the blind shall see, all manner of sickness, and all 

out of obscurity and out of manner of disease among the 

darkness. — Isa. xxix., 18. people. — Mat. iv., 23. And 

great multitudes came unto him, 
having with them those that 
were lame, blind, dumb, maim- 
ed, and many others, and cast 
them down at Jesus' feet, and 
he healed them ; insomuch that 
the multitude wondered wheu 



TO THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 297 

they saw the dumb to speak, 

the maimed to be whole, the 

lame to walk, and the blind to 

see ; and they glorified the God 

of Israel. — Mat. xv., 30, 31. 

The seed of the woman For this purpose the Son of 

shall bruise thy (the serpent's) God was manifested, that he 

head, might destroy the works of the 

devil. — 1 John hi., 8. Foras- 
much, then, as the children are 
partakers of flesh and blood, 
he also himself likewise took 
part of the same ; that through 
death he might destroy him 
that had the power of death, 
that is, the devil. — Heb. ii., 14. 
And the God of peace shall 
bruise Satan under your feet 
shortly. — Rom. xvi., 20. 
And thou shalt bruise his Then entered Satan into Ju- 
heel. — Gen. iii., 15. das ; and he went his way, 

and communed with the chief 
priests and captains how he 
might betray him unto them. — 
Luke xxii., 3, 4. This is your 
hour and the power of dark- 
ness, 53. 
The Lord God hath opened Jesus went forth, and said 
mine ear, and I was not re- unto them, Whom seek ye 1 
bellious, neither turned away They answered him, Jesus of 
back. I gave my back to Nazareth. Jesus saith unto 
the smiters, &c. — Isa. l.,5, 6. them, I am he. They went 

backward, and fell to the 
ground. Then asked he them 
again, Whom seek ye ] If ye 
seek me, let these go their way, 
&c. — John xviii., 4-8. No man 
taketh my life from me, but I 
lay it down of myself, &c. — 
John x., 18. 
For the Lord will help me ; And there appeared an angel 

from heaven strengthening him. 
— Mat. xxii., 43. 
Therefore shall I not be con- And he said unto them, Be 
founded ; therefore have I set hold, we go up to Jerusalem, 
my face like a flint, and I and all things that are written 
know that I shall not be by the prophets concerning the 
ashamed. Son of man shall be accom 

plished. — Luke xviii. % 31, 



298 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

O my Father, if this cup may 
not pass away from me except 
I drink it, thy will be done. 
— Mat. xxvi., 42, 44. Luke xxii., 
42. 
Smite the shepherd and the Judas came, and with him a 
sheep shall be scattered. — great multitude with swords 
Zech. xhh, 7. and staves, &c. All the dis- 

ciples forsook him and fled. — 
Mat. xxvi., 4, 8, 5, 6. 
And I will turn my hand upon Fear not, little flock, for it is 
the little ones. your Father's good pleasure to 

give you the kingdom. — Luke 
xii., 32. 
He was oppressed and he When he was accused he 
was afflicted ; yet he opened answered nothing. Then said 
not his mouth : he is brought Pilate unto him, Hearest thou 
as a lamb to the slaughter ; not how many things they wit- 
and as a sheep before her ness against thee ? And he 
shearers is dumb, so he open- answered him to never a word, 
ed not his mouth.— Zsa.liii.,7. — Mat. xxvii., 12-14. He held 

his peace and answered no- 
thing. — Mark xiv., 61. John 
xix., 9. 
He is despised : he was Then answered the Jews, 
despised, and we esteemed and said unto him, Say we not 
him not. — tea. liii., 3. Thus well that thou art a Samaritan, 
saith the Lord, the Redeem- and hast a devil? — /o/mviii.,48. 
er of Israel, and his Holy And Pilate saith unto the Jews, 
One ; to him whom man de- Behold your king ! But they 
spiseth, to him whom the cried out, Away with him, away 
nation abhorreth, to a servant with him, crucify him. — John 
of rulers, kings shall arise. — xix., 14, 15.. 
Isa. xlix., 7. 

They weighed for my And he said unto them, What 
price thirty pieces of silver ; will ye give me, and I will de- 
a goodly price that I was liver him unto you 1 And they 
prized at of them.— Zech. xi., covenanted with him for thirty 
12,13. pices of silver. — Mat. xxvi., 

15. 
And the Lord said unto Then Judas, which had he- 
me, cast it unto the potter ; trayed him, repented himself, 
and I took the thirty pie- and brought again the thirty 
ces of silver, and cast them pieces of silver to the chief 
to the potter in the house of priests and elders, and he cast 
the Lord. — Zech. xi., 13. down the pieces of silver in the 

temple* And the chief priests 
took the silver pieces, and said, 
It is not lawful for to put them 



TO THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 299 

into the treasury, because it is 
the price of blood. And they 
took counsel ; and bought with 
them the potter's field, to bury 
strangers in. — Mat. xxvii.,3, 5, 
6,7. 
When we shall see him Then came Jesus forth wear- 
there is no beauty that we ing the crown of thorns and 
should desire him. — Isa. liii., the purple robe. And Pilate 
2. saith unto them, Behold the 

man ! — John xix., 5. 
He is rejected of men; When the chief priests, there- 
we hid as it were our faces fore, and the officers saw him, 
from him. — lb., ver. 3. The they cried out, saying, Crucify 
stone which the builders re- him, crucify him — Away with 
jected is become the head- him, away with him, crucify 
stone of the corner. This is him. — John xix., 6-15. They 
the Lord's doing ; it is mar- had then a notable prisoner call- 
vellous in our eyes. — Psalm ed Barabbas. The governor 
xxii., 23. said unto them, Whether of the 

twain will ye that 1 release 
unto you 1 They said, Barabbas. 
— Mat. xxvii., 16, 21. 

Christ himself the chief cor- 
ner-stone. — Eph. ii., 20. 
He was taken from prison Pilate said unto him, Know- 
and from judgment.— Isaiah est thou not that I have pow- 
liii., 8. er to release thee? Pilate 

brought Jesus forth, and sat 
down in the judgment seat, 
&c. Then delivered he him 
unto them to be crucified. And 
they led him away. — John xix., 
10, 13. 16. 
I gave my back to the smi- Pilate took Jesus and scour- 
ters and my cheek to them ged him. And the soldiers plat- 
that plucked off the hair ; ted a crown of thorns, and put 

it on his head. And they smote 

him with their hands. — John 

xix., 1, 3. They buffeted him, 

and others smote him with the 

palms of their hands. — Mat. 

xxvi., 6, 7. 

I did not hide my face And some began to spit on 

from shame and spitting.— him, and to cover his face.— 

Isa. 1., 6- Mark xiv., 65. They bowed 

the knee before him, and mock- 
ed him, saying, Hail, king of the 
Jews ! And they spit upon 



300 



TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 



Many bulls have compass- 
ed me : strong bulls of Ba- 
shan have beset me round. 
They gaped upon me with 
their mouths (Heb., open- 
ed their mouth against me) 
as a ravening and a roaring 
lion : Thou hast brought me 
into the dust of death: For 
dogs have compassed me ; 
the assembly of the wicked 
have enclosed me: I am a 
worm and no man ; a re- 
proach of men and despised 
of the people. All they that 
seek me laugh me to scorn, 
&c.— Ps. xxii., 6, 7.11, 16. 

O daughter of Jerusalem : 
behold, thy King cometh un- 
to thee : he is just and low- 
ly, &c. — Zech. ix., 9. Mes- 
siah (the Prince) shall be 
cut off. — Ban. ix., 26. 

They part my garments 
among them, 



And cast lots upon my vest- 
ure. — Ps. xxii. , 18. 



They pierced my hands 
and my feet.— Ps. xxii., 16. 



He was numbered with 
the transgressors. — Isa. liii., 
12. 



him, and took the reed, and 
smote him on the head. — Mat. 
xxvii., 29, 30. 

They led him away where 
the scribes and the elders were 
assembled: They buffeted iiim, 
saying, Prophesy unto us, thou 
Christ : Who is he that smote 
thee'?— Mat. xxvi., 57, 67, 68. 

The soldiers of the governor 
took Jesus into the common 
hall, and gathered unto him the 
ivhole hand of soldiers ; and they 
stripped him, and put on him a 
scarlet robe ; and when they 
had platted a crown of thorns, 
they put it upon his head, and 
a reed in his right hand; and 
they bowed the knee before 
him, saying, Hail, king of the 
Jews!— Mat. xxvii., 27, 29. 

And Pilate wrote a title, and 
put it on the cross. And the 
writing was, Jesus of Naza- 
reth, the King of the Jews. — ■ 
John xix., 19. 

Then the soldiers, when they 
had crucified Jesus, took his 
garments, and made four parts, 
to every soldier a part; and 
also his coat : 

Now the coat was without 
seam, woven from the top 
throughout. They said there- 
fore among themselves, Let us 
not rend it, but cast lots for it, 
whose it shall be : that the 
scriptures might be fulfilled, 
&c. — John xix., 23, 24. 

They crucified him. — John 
xix., 18. Behold my hands 
and my feet. — Luke xxiv., 39. 
Reach hither thy finger, and 
behold my hands ; and reach 
hither thy hand, and thrust it 
into my side. — John xx., 27. 

A friend of publicans and 
sinners.— Mat. xi., 19. Pilate 
said unk> them, Whom will y© 



TO THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 301 

that I release unto you 1 Ba- 
rabbas or Jesus, which is call- 
ed Christ. — Mat. xxvii., 17. 
Now Barabbas was a robber. — 
John xviii., 40. Then were 
two thieves crucified with him, 
one on the right hand, and an- 
other on the left. — Mat., xxvii., 
38. 
They gave me also gall And when they were come 
for my meat ; unto a place called Golgotha, 

they give him vinegar to drink 

mingled with gall : and when 

he had tasted thereof, he would 

not drink.— Mat. xxvii., 33, 34. 

And in my thirst they gave After this, Jesus, knowing 

me vinegar to drink. — Psalm that all things were now ac- 

lxix., 21. complished, that the scripture 

might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. 
Now there was set a vessel 
full of vinegar ; and they filled 
a spunge with vinegar, and put 
it upon hyssop, and put it to 
his mouth. When Jesus, there- 
fore, had received the vinegar, 
he said, It is finished. — John 
xix., 28, 30. 
All they that see me laugh And they that passed by rail- 
me to scorn : they shoot out edon him, wagging their heads, 
the lip, they shake the head, and saying, Ah ! thou that de- 
saying, He trusted in the stroyest the temple and build- 
Lord that he would deliver est it in three days, save thy- 
him : let him deliver him, self and come down from 
seeing he delighted in him. the cross. — Mark xv., 29, 30. 
— Ps. xxii., 7, 8. The soldiers also mocked him, 

saying, If thou be the king of 
the Jews, save thyself. Like- 
wise also the chief priests : If 
he be the king of Israel, let 
him now come down from the 
cross, and we will believe him. 
He trusted in God : let him de- 
liver him now, if he will have 
him ; for he said, I am the Son 
of God.— Mat. xxvii., 41-43. 
He keepeth all his bones, The Jews, therefore, because 
not one of them is broken, it was the preparation, be- 
— Psalm xxxiv., 20. Neither sought Pilate that their legs 
6hall ye break a bone there- might be broken, and that^they 

C c 



302 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

of (of the Paschal Lamb). — might be taken away. Then 
Exod. xii., 46. came the soldiers, and brake 

the legs of the first, and of the 

other which was crucified with 

him. But when they came to 

Jesus, and saw that he was 

dead already, they brake not 

his legs. 

They shall look upon me But one of the soldiers with 

whom they have pierced, &c. a spear pierced his side, &c. — 

— Zech. xii., 10. John xix., 31, 34. 

He made his grave with There were two thieves cru- 
the wicked (or his grave was cified with him. — Mat. xxvii., 
appointed with the wicked), 38. 

And with the rich in his When the- even was come, 
death (or with the rich man a rich man of Arimathea, na- 
was his tomb, Lowttts Trans- med Joseph — went to Pilate 
latidn). — Isa. liii., 9. and begged the body of Jesus. 

Then Pilate commanded the 

body to be delivered : And 

when Joseph had taken the 

body, he wrapped it in a clean 

linen cloth, and laid it in his 

own new tomb, which he had 

hewn out in the rock. — Mat. 

xxvii., 57, 60. 

A man of sorrows, and ac- Being grieved for the hard- 

quainted with grief. — Isa* ness of their hearts. — Mark in., 

liii., 3. 5. He groaned in spirit, and 

was troubled — Jesus wept. — 
John xi., 33, 35. He beheld the 
city, and wept over it. — Luke 
xix., 41. Jesus began to show 
unto his disciples how he must 
suffer many things and be kill- 
ed. — Mat. xvi., 21. Being in 
an agony, his sweat was as it 
were great drops of blood fall- 
ing down to the ground. — Luke 
xxii., 44. 
We did esteem him strick- We have a law, and by our 
en, smitten of God, and af- law he ought to die, because 
flicted. — Isa. liii., 4. he made himself the Son of 

God. — John, xix., 7. He hath 
spoken blasphemy — he is guil- 
ty of death. — Mat. xxvi., 65, 66. 
Christ was made a curse for 
us : For it is written, Cursed 
is every one that hangeth on a 
tree.— Gal. iii., 13. 



TO THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 303 

Thou shalt make his soul Now is my soul troubled, 
an offering for sin. — Isa. liii., and what shall I say, Father, 
10. save me from this hour, but 

for this cause came I uuto this 

hour. — John, xii., 27. My soul 

is exceeding sorrowful, even 

unto death. — Mat. xxvi., 38. 

My God, my God, why My God, my God, why hast 

hast thou forsaken me ? — thou forsaken me 1 — Mat. xxvii. 

Psal. xxii., 1. 46. Mark xv., 34. 

He was cast off out of He bowed his head and gave 
the land of the living. — Isa. up the ghost. — John xix., 30. 
liii., 8. 

My flesh also shall rest in He showed himself alive af- 
hope : For thou wilt not ter his passion by many infalli- 
leave my soul in hell; nei- ble proofs. — Acts i., 3. He 
ther wilt thou suffer thine (David) spoke of the resurrec- 
Holy One to see corruption, tion of Christ, that his soul 
— Psal. xvi., 10. When thou was not left in hell (Hades, the 
shalt make his soul an offer- state of the dead), neither his 
ing for sin — he shall prolong flesh did see corruption. — Acts 
his days. — Isa. liii., 10. p., 31. He rose again the third 

day, according to the scrip- 
tures. — 1 Cor. xv., 4. 
Thou hast ascended on He was parted from them, 
high, and carried up into heaven. 

— Luke xxiv., 51. While they 
beheld, he was taken up. — Acts 
i., 9. After the Lord had spo- 
ken unto them, he was received 
up into heaven, and sat on the 
right hand of God. — Mark xvi., 
19. 
Thou hast received gifts for My peace I give unto you. — 
men ; John xiv., 27. If I go not away, 

the Comforter will not come 
unto you ; but if I depart, I will 
send him unto you. — John xvi., 
7. Thou hast given him pow- 
€r over all flesh, that he should 
give eternal life to as many as 
thou hast given him. — John 
xvii., 2. 
Yea, for the rebellious also ; While we were yet sinners, 

Christ died for us. — Rom. v., 8. 
He that spared not his own 
Son, but delivered him up for 
us all, how shall he not with 
him also freely give us all 
things 1 — Rom. viii., 32. 



304 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

That the Lord God might If a man love me, he will 
dwell among them. — Psalm keep my words ; and my Fa- 
lxviii., 18. ther will love him, and we will 

come unto him and make our 

abode with him. — John xiv., 23. 

He made intercession for Father, forgive them, for 

the transgressors. — Isaiah they know not what they do. 

liv., 3. — Luke xxiii., 34. He ever liv- 

eth to make intercession, &c. 
— Heb. vii., 25. 
The Lord hath sworn, and We have a great high-priest 
will not repent, Thou art a that is passed into the heavens, 
priest for ever. — PsaL ex., 4. Jesus, the Son of God. — Heb. 
He shall be a priest upon his iv., 14. This man, because he 
throne. — Zech. vi., 13. continueth ever, hath an un- 

changeable priesthood. — Heb. 
vii., 24. 
After the order of Melchis- After the similitude of Mel- 
edek (king of righteousness), chisedec there ariseth another 
— Psalm ex., 4. priest, who is made, not after 

the law of a carnal command- 
ment, but after the power of 
an endless life. Such a high 
priest became us. — Heb. vii., 
15, 16, 26. 
All we like sheep have For all have sinned and come 
gone astray ; we have turn- short of the glory of God. — 
ed every one to his own way ; Rom. xxiii., 12. Death passed 
and the Lord hath laid on upon all men, for that all have 
him the iniquity of us all. sinned. — Rom. v., 12. Christ 
He shall bear their iniqui- died for our sins according to 
ties. He bare the sins of the Scriptures. — 1 Cor. xv.,13. 
many.— Jsa. liii., 6-10, 12. Who his own self bare our sins 

in his own body on the tree, 
that we, being dead to sins, 
should live unto righteousness : 
by whose stripes ye were heal- 
ed. For ye were as sheep go- 
ing astray : but are now re- 
turned unto the Shepherd and 
bishop of your souls. — 1 Pet. 
ii., 24, 25. 
Thou shalt make his soul Christ hath given himself for 
an offering for sin, ver. 10. us an offering and a sacrifice to 

God. — Eph. i., 2. He hath ap- 
peared to put away sin by the 
sacrifice of himself. — Heb. ix., 
26. 
Seventy weeks are detetr When the fulness of time 



TO THE MESSXAHSHIP OF JESUS. 305 

mined upon thy people, and was come, God sent forth his 
upon thy holy city, to finish Son, to redeem them that were 
the transgression, under the law, &c. — Gal. iv.,4, 

5. For this cause he is the 
mediator of the new testament, 
that by means of death, for the 
redemption of the transgressions 
that were under the first tes- 
tament, they which are called 
might receive the promise of 
eternal inheritance. — Heb. ix., 
15. 
To make an end of sins, The Lamb of God which 

taketh away the sins of the 
world.— John i.,29. The blood 
of Jesus Christ his son cleans- 
eth from all sin. — 1 John i., 7. 
To make reconciliation for All things are of God, who 
iniquity, hath reconciled us to himself 

by Jesus Christ, and hath given 
to us the ministry of reconcili- 
ation : to wit, that God was in 
Christ reconciling the world 
unto himself, not imputing their 
trespasses unto them, and hath 
committed unto us the word of 
reconciliation. — 2 Cor. v., 19. 
You that were some time alien- 
ated and enemies in your mind 
by wicked works, yet now 
hath he reconciled in the body 
of his flesh through death, &c. 
—Co/, i., 21. 
And to bring in everlasting To present you holy and un- 
righteousness. — Dan. ix.,24. blameable, and unreproveable 

in his sight. — Col. i., 21, 22. 
For this purpose the Son of God 
was manifested, that he might 
destroy the works of the devil. 
Whosoever is born of God doth 
not commit sin. — 1 John hi., 8, 
9. Every one that doeth right- 
eousness is born of him. — 1 
John ii., 29. 
When thou shalt make his He became obedient unto 
soul an offering for sin, he death, even the death of the 
shall see his seed, he shall cross. Wherefore God hath 
prolong his days, and the highly exalted him, and given 
pleasure of the Lord shall him a name above every name, 

Cc2 



306 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

prosper in his hand. He shall &e. — Phil, ii., 8, 9. We see 
bear their iniquities. There- Jesus, who was made a little 
fore will I divide him a por- lower than the angels for the 
tion with the great, and he suffering of death, crowned 
shall divide the spoil with with glory and honour, &c. — 
the strong, because he hath Heb. ii., 9. Jesus, the author 
poured out his soul unto and finisher of our faith, who, 
death. — Isa. liii., 10, 12. for the joy that was set before 

him, endured the cross, despi- 
sing the shame, and is set down 
at the right hand of the throne 
of God.— Heb. xii., 2. 
I will make him my first- Who is the blessed and only 
born, higher than the kings Potentate, the King of kings, 
of the earth. — Psal. lxxxix., and Lord of lords. — 1 Tim. vi., 
27. 15. Jesus Christ, who is the 

Prince of the kings of the 
earth. — Rev. i., 5. 
I will pour water upon him In the last day, that great 
that is thirsty, and floods up- day of the feast, Jesus stood 
on the dry ground ; I will pour and cried, saying, If any man 
my Spirit upon thy seed, and thirst, let him come unto me, 
my blessing upon their off- and drink. He that believeth 
spring ; and they shall spring on me, as the scripture hath 
up as among the grass, as said, out of his belly shall flow 
willows by the water cour- rivers of living water. But.this 
ses. — Isa. xliv., 3, 4. Living spake he of the Spirit, which 
waters shall go out from Je- they that believe on him should 
rusalem. — Zech. xiv., 8. receive, for the Holy Ghost 

was not yet given, because that 
Jesus was not yet glorified. — 
John vii., 37-39. Behold, I send 
the promise of my Father up- 
on you : but tarry ye in the 
city of Jerusalem until ye be 
endued with power from on 
high. — Luke xxiv., 40. 
And the Redeemer shall I will pray the Father, and 
come to Zion, and unto them he will give you another Com- 
that turn from transgression forter, that he may abide ivith 
in Jacob, saith the Lord. As you for ever; even the Spirit of 
for me, this is my covenant truth ; whom the world cannot 
with them, saith the Lord ; receive, because it seeth him 
My Spirit that is upon thee, not, neither knovveth him, &c. 
and my words which I have — John xiv., 16, 17. He shall 
put in thy mouth, shall not teach you all things, and bring 
depart out of thy mouth, nor all things to your remem- 
out of the mouth of thy seed, brance, whatsoever I have said 
nor out of the mouth of thy unto you,*ver. 26. The sword 



TO THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 



307 



seed's seed, saith the Lord, 
from henceforth and forever. 
—Isa. lix., 20, 21. 

Behold, the days come, 
saith the Lord, that I will 
make a new covenant with the 
house of Israel, and with the 
house of Judah, not accord- 
ing to the covenant that I 
made with their fathers, in 
the day that I took them by 
the hand to bring them out 
of the land of Egypt (which 
my covenant they broke, al- 
though I was a husband un- 
to them, saith the Lord) ; but 
this shall be the covenant 
that I will make with the 
house of Israel : After those 
days, saith the Lord, I will 
put my law in their inward 
parts, and write it in their 
heart ; and will be their God, 
and they shall be my people. 
— Jer. xxxi., 31-33. 



It is a light thing that thou 
shouldst be my servant, to 
raise up the tribes of Jacob, 
and to restore the preserved 
of Israel ; I will also give 
thee for a light to the Gen- 
tiles, that thou may st be my 
salvation unto the end of the 
earth. — Isa. xlix., 6. There 
shall be a root of Jesse — to 
it shall the Gentiles seek, xi., 
10. I will give thee for a 
covenant of the people, for a 
light of the Gentiles ; to open 
the blind eyes, &c, xlii., 6, 
7. The Gentiles shall come 
to thy light, lx., 3. 



of the Spirit, which is the word 
of God.— Eph. vi., 17. 

Now hath he obtained a 
more excellent ministry, by 
how much also he is the medi- 
ator of a better covenant, which 
was established upon better 
promises. For if that first cov- 
enant had been faultless, then 
should no place have been 
sought for the second. For, 
rinding fault with them, he 
saith, Behold, the days come, 
saith the Lord, when I will 
make a new covenant, &c. In 
that he saith, A new covenant, 
he hath made the first old. — 
Heb. viii., 6-13. For the law 
made nothing perfect, but the 
bringing in of a better hope did. 
By so much was Jesus made a 
surety of a better testament. — 
Heb. vii., 19,22. Ye are man- 
ifestly declared to be the epis- 
tle of Christ ministered by us, 
written not with ink, but with 
the Spirit of the living God; 
not in tables of stone, but in 
fleshly tables of the heart. — 2 
Cor. iii., 3. 

And he said unto them, Go 
ye into all the world, and 
preach the gospel to every 
creature. — Mark xvi., 15. A 
light to lighten the Gentiles. — 
Luke ii., 32. All power is giv- 
en unto me in heaven and in 
earth. Go ye, therefore, and 
teach all nations. — Mat. xxviii., 
18, 19. The Gentiles, unto 
whom now I send thee, to open 
their eyes, and to turn them 
from darkness to light, and 
from the power of Satan unto 
God, that they may receive 
forgiveness of sins, and inher- 
itance among them which are 
sanctified by faith that is in 



308 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

me. — Acts xxvi., 17, 18. Ye 
were sometimes darkness, but 
now are ye light in the Lord. — 
JEph. v., 8. 
Make the heart of thispeo- Paul and Barnabas waxed 
pie fat, and make their ears bold, and said, It was neces- 
heavy, and shut their eyes, sary that the word of God 
lest they see with their eyes, should first have been spoken 
and hear with their ears, and to you ; but seeing ye put it 
understand with their heart, from you, and judge yourselves 
and convert and be healed. — unworthy of everlasting life, 
Isa. vi., 10. I have spread lo, we turn to the Gentiles. — 
out my hands all the day un- Acts xiii., 46. 
to a rebellious people, &c. — 
Isa. lxv., 2, 

I am sought of them that And when the Gentiles heard 
asked not for me ; I am found this, they were glad, and glo- 
of them that sought me not; rifled the word of the Lord; 
I said, Behold me, behold me, and as many as were ordained 
to a nation that was not called to eternal life believed. — Acts 
by my name. — Isa. lxv., 1. xiii., 4, 8. Be it known there- 
Look to me and be ye saved, fore unto you (the Jews), that 
all the ends of the earth. — the salvation of God is sent 
Isa. xlv., 22. unto the Gentiles, and that 

they will hear it. — Acts xxviii., 

28. 

The people of the Prince He sent forth his armies and 

that shall come shall destroy destroyed those murderers, and 

the city, burned up their city. — Mat. 

xxii., 7. Jerusalem, Jeru- 
salem, &c, behold your house 
is left unto you desolate. — Mat. 
xxiii., 37, 38. 
And the sanctuary ; There shall not be left here 

(of the temple) one stone upon 
another, that shall not be 
thrown down. — Mat. xxiv., 2. 
And the end thereof shall be Ye shall hear of wars, and 
with a flood, and unto the rumours of wars, but the end is 
end of the war desolations not yet. There shall be great 
are determined. — Dan. ix., tribulation, &c.,ver. 6, &c. 
26. 

And he shall confirm the He went throughout every 
covenant with many for one city and village, preaching and 
week, ver. 27. showing the glad tidings of the 

kingdom of God. — Luke viii., 
1. I am not sent but unto the 
lost sheep of the house of Is- 
rael. — Mat. xv., £4. Thus jt i§ 



TO THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JEStJS. 309 

written, and thus it behooved 
Christ to suffer, and to rise from 
the dead the third day; and 
that repentance and remission 
of sins should be preached in 
his name among all nations, 
beginning at Jerusalem. — Luke 
xxiv., 46, 47. They that glad- 
ly received his (Peter's) word 
were baptized: and the same 
day there were added unto them 
about three thousand souls, and 
the Lord added unto the church 
daily such as should be saved. 
— Acts ii., 41, 47. 
And in the midst of the Sacrifice, and offering, and 
week he shall cause the sacri- burnt-offerings thou wouldst 
fice and oblation to cease, not. He taketh away the first, 
ver. 27. Sacrifice and offer- that he may establish the see- 
ing thou didst not desire ; ond. After he had offered one 
burnt-offering and sin-offer- sacrifice for sins, he for ever 
ing hast thou not required, sat down on the right hand of 
Then said I, Lo, I come : in God; by one suffering he hath 
the volume of the book it is perfected for ever them that 
written of me, I delight to do are sanctified. — Heb. x., 8, 9, 
thy will, my God : yea, thy 12, 14. 
law is within my heart. — 
Psalm xl., 6, 7, 8. 

For the overspreading of When ye therefore shall see 
abominations he shall make the abomination of desolation, 
it desolate, even until the spoken of by Daniel the proph- 
consummation, and that de- et, stand in the holy place, 
termined shall be poured up- Then let them which be in Ju- 
on the desolate. — Dan. ix., dea flee unto the mountains. — 
27. They shall pollute the Mat. xxiv., 15, 16. Thine ene- 
sanctuary of strength, and mies shall cast a trench about 
shall take away the daily sa- thee, and compass thee round, 
crifice, and they shall place and keep thee in on every side, 
the abomination that maketh and shall lay thee even with the 
desolate. — Dan. xi., 31. ground, and thy children within 

thee ; and they shall not leave 

in thee one stone upon another ; 

because thou knowest not the 

time of thy visitation. — Luke 

xix., 43, 44. 

The people that do know It is given unto us to know 

their God shall be strong and the mysteries of the kingdom. 

do exploits. And they that — Mat. xiii., 11. Mark iv., 11. 

understand among the people They went forth and preached 

shall instruct many ; everywhere, the Lord working 



310 



TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 



Yet they shall fall by the 
sword, and by flame, by cap- 
tivity, and by spoil many 
days. — Dan. xi., 33. 



Some of them of under- 
standing shall fall, to try them, 
and purge them, and to make 
them white, even to the time 
of the end : because it is yet 
for a time appointed. 



And the king shall do ac- 
cording to his will; and he 
shall exalt himself above ev- 
ery god, and shall speak mar- 
vellous things against the 
God of gods, and shall pros- 
per till the indignation be ac- 
complished; for that which 
is determined shall be done. 
He shall magnify himself 
above all. — Dan. xi., 35-37. 

The judgment shall sit, and 
they shall take away his do- 
minion, to consume and to 
destroy it unto the end. — 
Dan. vii., 26. 

He shall speak peace unto 
the heathen. — Zech. ix., 10. 



with them, and confirming the 
word with signs following. — 
Mark xvi., 20. Long time abode 
they speaking boldly in the 
Lord, which gave testimony 
unto the word of his grace, and 
granted signs and wonders to 
be done by their hands. — Acts 
xiv., 3. Strong in the Lord and 
in the power of his might. — 
Eph. vi., 10. Many which heard . 
the word believed. — Acts iv., 4. 

Then shall they deliver you 
to be afflicted, and shall kill 
you : and ye shall be hated of 
all nations for my name's sake. 
— Mat. xxiv., 9. For I think 
that God hath set forth us the 
apostles last, as it were ap- 
pointed to death.— 1 Cor. iv., 9. 
We despaired even of life, we 
had the sentence of death in 
ourselves. — 2 Cor. i., 8, 9. 

What are these which are 
arrayed in white robes ? and 
whence came they? These are 
they which came out of great 
tribulation, and have washed 
their robes, and made them 
white in the blood of the Lamb, 
&c— Rev. vii., 13, 14. 

The day of Christ shall not 
come, except there come a fall- 
ing away first, and that man of 
sin be revealed, the son of per- 
dition; who opposeth and ex- 
alteth himself above all that is 
called God, or that is worship- 
ped ; so that he, as God, sitteth 
in the temple of God, showing 
himself that he is God. — 2 Thes. 
ii., 3, 4. 

Whom the Lord will con- 
sume with the Spirit of his 
mouth, and shall destroy with 
the brightness of his coming. — 
2 Thes. ii., 8. 

And came and preached peace 
to you which were afar off, and 



TO THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 311 

to them that were nigh. — Eph. 

ii., 17. 

I will raise unto David a Christ, who of God is made 

righteous branch, and a king unto us righteousness. — 1 Cor. 

shall reign and prosper — And i., 30. The righteousness of 

this is his name whereby he God which is by faith in Christ. 

shall be called, The Lord"(Je Rom. hi., 22. That we might 

hovah) our Righteousness. — be made the righteousness of 
Jer. xxiii., 6. God in him. — 2 Cor. iii., 9; v., 

21. 
And he shall execute judg- A sceptre of righteousness is 
ment and justice in the earth, the sceptre of thy kingdom. — 
ver. 5. Heb. i., 8. 

In his days Judah shall be For I say unto you, ye shall 
saved, and Israel shall dwell not see me henceforth till ye 
safely, ver. 6. As for thee say, Blessed is he that cometh 
also, by the blood of thy in the name of the Lord. — Mat. 
covenant I have sent forth xxiii., 39. Blindness in part is 
thy prisoners out of the pit happened to Israel, until the ful- 
wherein is no water. — Zech. ness of the Gentiles be come 
ix., 11. in, and so all Israel shall be 

saved, &c. — Rom. xi., 25, 26. 
The Lord said unto my Jesus answered, How say 
Lord, sit thou at my right the scribes that Christ is the 
hand until I make thine ene- Son of David ! For David him- 
mies thy footstool. — Psalm self said by the Holy Ghost, 
ex., 1. The Lord said to my Lord, Sit 

thou, &c. — Mark xii., 35, 36. 
He must reign till he put all 
enemies under his feet. — 1 Cor. 
xv., 25. From henceforth ex- 
pecting till his enemies be made 
his footstool. — Heb. x., 13. 
Whom the heaven must receive 
until the times of restitution of 
all things, which God hath 
spoken by the mouth of all his 
holy prophets since the world 
began. — Acts hi., 21. 
For unto us a child is born, Wherefore God also hath 
and unto us a son is given, highly exalted him, and given 
the government shall be upon him a name which is above ev- 
his shoulder; and his name ery name ; that at the name of 
shall be called Wonderful, Jesus every knee should bow, 
Counsellor, The Mighty God, of things in heaven, and things 
The everlasting Father, The in earth, and things under the 
Prince of Peace. — Isa. ix.,6. earth; and that every tongue 

should confess that Jesus Christ 
is Lord, to the glory of God 



312 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

the Father.— Phil, ii.,9, 10,11. 
God set him at his own right 
hand in heavenly places, far 
above all principality, and pow- 
er, and might, and dominion, 
and every name that is named, 
not only in this world, but also 
in that which is to come. — 
Eph. i., 20, 21. 
Of the increase of his gov- Thou shalt bring forth a son, 
ernment and peace there shall and shalt call his name Jesus, 
be no end, upon the throne He shall be great, and shall be 
of David, and upon his king- called the Son of the Highest ; 
dom, to order it, and to es- and the Lord God shall give 
tablish it with judgment and unto him the throne of his fa- 
with justice, from henceforth, ther David : And he shall reign 
even for ever, ver. 7. over the house of- Jacob for 

ever, &c. — Luke i., 31, 32, 33. 
The kingdom and domin- All power is given unto me 
ion, and the greatness of the in heaven and in earth. — Mat. 
kingdom under the whole xxviii., 18. To appoint unto 
heaven, shall be given to the you a kingdom, as my Father 
people of the saints of the hath appointed unto me. — Luke 
Most High, whose kingdom xxii., 29. We see not yet all 
is an everlasting kingdom, things put under him. — Heb. ii., 
and all the dominions shall 8. The kingdoms of this world 
serve and obey him. — Dan* are become the kingdoms of 
vii., 27. our Lord and of his Christ ; 

and he shall reign for ever and 
ever. — Rev. xi., 15. 

In searching the Scriptures, we see that " these are they 
which testify of Jesus." Their testimony, that of God by 
whose inspiration they were given, is not a question, but a 
fact. The perfect uniformity and parallelism between the 
predictions relative to a Messiah and the promised salvation, 
and to the history of Jesus and the doctrine of the gospel, are 
thus manifest to the sight. Each prediction has its counter- 
part in the New Testament, as exactly fitted to the events 
and to the doctrine as those which marked, as in a mould, 
the desolation of cities and of countries. By those of the 
latter order the prophets showed what their commission was, 
and by those of the former how faithfully and fully they dis- 
charged it. And as the history of the dispersed of Judah 
since the crucifixion of Jesus, and the fate of the judgment- 
stricken Babylon, Edom, Moab, Ammon, Philistia, and Pal- 
estine give ample verification of the prophetic word, the tes- 
timony of the prophets is thus also seen to be so clear and 
so copious concerning the Messiah, that, in the one case as 



TO THE MESSIAIISHIP OF JESUS. 313 

in the other, he that hath ears to hear may hear, and he that 
hath eyes to see may see. 

The inspiration of the prophets being established by in- 
controvertible evidence and existing facts, and the coming of 
a Messiah having been testified by them, we may come and 
see how they did testify of Christ, and of him alone ; and as 
assuredly as their word is true, so at no other time, in no 
other place, of no other lineage, and in no other than in the 
same supernatural manner, could the Messiah, who was to 
be cut off, have come, but that, in each respect, which marked 
the advent of the author of the Christian faith. And such is 
the testimony which God hath given of his Son, that Chris- 
tians may ask and defy skeptics to answer, Of what that 
is written concerning Jesus, or that constitutes an essential 
portion of a fundamental principle of the Christian faith, did 
not Moses and the prophets testify 1 Do we read in the New 
Testament of the humiliation of the Son of God, of his divine 
nature and of his humble birth, of his mortal lineage and of 
his heavenly life, of his immaculate character, of his incom- 
parable doctrine, of his gracious words, or of his marvellous 
works, of his unparalleled sufferings and alike unequalled pa- 
tience, of his expiatory sacrifice and free salvation, of his 
resurrection from the dead and ascension into glory, of his 
spiritual kingdom and supreme dominion, of his gifts to his 
people, of the promise of the Spirit, and of his power to save, 
of the persecution of his followers, of an antichristian apos- 
tacy in his church, and of the final and glorious triumph of 
the gospel, we see in all the scriptural record concerning Je- 
sus and his faith the express confirmation of the words of 
the prophets concerning the Messiah, which we already know 
to be divine ; and the fulfilment of which must be matter-of- 
fact, if the word that is of God does not return to him void. 

Abundant even as the proof of their inspiration is the tes- 
timony of the prophets, for which no completion can be found, 
but in the history of Christ and in the gospel which he preach- 
ed. But there the conformity is perfect ; and there, as every- 
where else, where only it can be rightly searched for, the 
completion of every prediction is to be found, with all the 
general truth and all the minute particularities, which any 
scene of predicted denunciation — even Babylon itself — can 
show. The subject matter of the New Testament was first 
spread over the pages of inspiration, penned by all the proph- 
ets, before the testimony was committed even to eyewitness- 
es to record. To believe in Moses and the prophets, in full 
assurance of the truth of their divine word, is to believe in 
Christ, of whom that word bears witness. It is the history 
of the promised Messiah and of the promised salvation, of 
none other and of nothing else, that the evangelists relate. 
Their narrative exhibits to view predicted events, after these 

D D 



314 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

had been realized in their proper time, place, nature, tendency 
and end. The predictions of all the prophets concerning the 
Messiah are concentrated, combined, and imbodied in the 
person of Jesus Christ. The separate rays which sparkle in 
their inspired word all rest in a sacred halo around him, and 
throw a light on the whole gospel history, such as could have 
come only from heaven. On the whole dark history of all 
men besides there rests not a single ray of such glory. The 
truths contained in the New Testament Scriptures, wherever 
their record is essential to the confirmation of prophecy, can- 
not be impeached without confronting the testimony, and de- 
nying the authority of those who manifestly spake by inspi- 
ration of God. Divinely authenticated as their word is, it is 
folly, not wisdom, to be slow to believe all that the prophets 
have spoken. And they whose breath, like that of the angel 
which smote the host of Senacherib, no power on earth has 
been able to withstand, and at the voice of whose words the 
mightiest monarchies on earth have been prostrated to the 
dust, proclaim by a voice from heaven, as the blood of mar- 
tyrs cries from the earth, that the life, and doctrine, and 
death, and resurrection of Jesus, and all that is written con- 
cerning him, expressly characterize the Messiah, who died 
and yet saw no corruption, who gave himself an offering for 
sin, and is set down at the right hand of the majesty of God 
till his enemies be made his footstool, and who is the Saviour 
of those who do not reject such testimony nor neglect so 
great salvation, but believe in Moses and the prophets, and in 
Him of whom they all did testify. 

Unbelievers, intent on earthly things and blinded to things 
spiritual, and not seeking to know the good ways of the Lord, 
have rejected the doctrines of the gospel as incredible, from 
their not being adapted to draw the carnal eye ; and they 
have denied the validity of any human testimony to substan- 
tiate the truth of the New Testament record. But, in very 
truth, had the doctrines of the gospel been other than they 
are, and had not Jesus of Nazareth been the Author of the 
new and everlasting covenant, and endowed with wisdom and 
power alike divine, he would then have wanted the essen- 
tial credentials of the Messiah ; faith in him would have been 
an utter delusion, and his place would have been among those 
felse Christs, in whom the Jews did believe, while they were 
guided by their prejudices and passions, and gave heed to 
fancies or fables of human invention rather than to the 
testimony of God by the prophets. The doctrines of the 
gospel are made their own credentials. For however far 
the^ surpass what it could have ever entered into the heart 
of man to conceive, showing that God's ways are high above 
our ways, and his thoughts above our thoughts, they are not 
only the farther removed from all suspicion of having ori- 



TO THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 3l5 

ginated in man's wisdom or device, but the more completely 
do they accord with these declarations of the prophets ; and, 
by the surest token that they form the whole counsel of God, 
they reach in exact measurement and in every particular, 
without in any case either the slightest shortcoming or ex- 
cess, the full and precise standard which God had set up as 
the rule — his own declared purpose in his infallible word — 
by which they might rightly be tried. 

The word that unfolds the faith of Jesus has doubly a wit- 
ness of itself. It challenges belief both as that which is right, 
and as that which the prophets had testified aforehand. It 
is a doctrine according to godliness. Its ethics are the pu- 
rest that ever were heard of; and its motives alone, when felt 
in the heart, can realize them in the life. The moralists ot 
Athens were professors of an art, but Jesus of Nazareth was 
a teacher of righteousness. He was the anatomist of the 
soul, who laid bare its secret thoughts, and his word is quick 
and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, reach- 
ing to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, and is a 
discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. But he 
is also the physician of souls, and sin, the spiritual malady 
which worketh death, as it has brought desolation, can be 
eradicated only by his word, which is spirit and is life. The 
perfect adaptation of the doctrines of the gospel to the ren- 
ovation of our moral nature, or its efficacy, when hid in the 
heart, to leaven the whole, could not be adequately touched 
on in a concluding page. But while we here see before us 
the testimony of the prophets to the identical truths record- 
ed in the New Testament, and how these are indented into 
one as forming the completion of the Old, an illustration or 
two may be adduced by way of example, to show the Divine 
corroboration which is given by the spirit of prophecy to the 
faith of Jesus. 

The marks of its Divine origin, which are visible in the 
whole of the Christian faith, as well as sealed by that Spirit, 
are in nothing more marked, and bright, and striking than in 
the character of its Author. The man Christ Jesus, i. e., 
the anointed Saviour, stands alone, among all the thousands 
of millions of our race, a pattern of absolute perfection, a 
man without sin, in whom Satan had nothing, a man of 
whom alone it can be said that he fulfilled all righteousness. 
Surveying the whole of human nature in its ruins, from its 
fall unto the present day, there is not to be seen another 
column, resting on its own base, that rises high above them 
all, and, without inclining a hair's-breadth to any side, points 
straight upward to heaven. All else lay prostrate in the 
dust, to which the soul of man now naturally cleaves. The 
imaginations of man's heart, saith He who spake by the proph- 
ets, is evil. It is human to err, was an adage among the 



316 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

heathen. And as man, after the image of God was defaced 
from his soul, lost the faculty of even describing or conceiv- 
ing a sinless and righteous mortal, such a character was never 
drawn, and is nowhere to be found but as it is set forth unto 
the world in the history of Jesus. The fancy of man could 
paint cruel and carnal deities opposed in fierce contention ; 
but it entered not into the heart of man to conceive that the 
well-beloved of the Father would be manifested in the flesh 
to personify virtue and to make an end of sins. The world 
by wisdom knew not God. And to whom, it may be asked, 
shall we liken Christ, or what likeness shall we compare 
unto him 1 The gods of the heathens, whom men called im- 
mortals, were bloated with vices of which none but a hypo- 
crite could be guilty, if he names the name of Jesus. Un- 
spotted as he was with the least taint of their vices, not all 
the virtues of all the gods could bear a momentary compar- 
ison with the righteousness of Christ. And looking singly 
to the exercise of his supernatural power, ministering to 
goodness no less divine, does not the life of Jesus, as penned 
by evangelists, rise in moral sublimity far beyond all the 
fancied actions of fabled deities, and show that he who was 
cradled in a manger and had not where to lay his head was 
yet in a more glorious form than theirs the Son of God with 
power ? Mercury, the winged messenger of the gods, could 
not anticipate the march of time and tell of coming judg- 
ments. Nor could Argus with his hundred eyes look into 
the heart, perceive the thoughts, and tell what was in man. 
Neptune, riding on the stormy billow, must sink beneath his 
waves at the voice of Jesus, rising from his tranquil sleep in 
the tempest-tossed vessel, and saying to the stormy sea, 
Peace, be still. Jupiter, with his voice of thunder, could 
never speak to the conscience with half the efficacy which 
a word of Jesus gave to the crowing of a cock : nor could 
the unerring dart of Apollo pierce the soul like a glance of 
Jesus's eye, accompanied by so familiar a sound. Mars, the 
god of war, had neither the will, the courage, nor the power 
to resist his master, who is a murderer from the beginning : 
and his sword was but the badge of slavery to him, who fell 
like lightning from heaven at the word of Jesus, and to whom 
he said, while a hungered in the wilderness, Get thee behind 
me, Satan. The counsel of all heathen gods could not pass 
the decrees which came with effect in two words from the 
lips of Christ, Young man, arise ! Young maid, arise ! Laz- 
arus, come forth ! and the dead arose, and the buried obeyed. 
Heathens could mould a statue in the human form, but they 
could not invest their gods with a divinity such as ever rest- 
ed on Jesus, nor, with all the powers of creative fancy, could 
they draw the likeness of one who, acting among men, could 
sustain the character of the Son of God, to whom every knee 



TO THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 317 

should bow. But there once were worshippers of the one 
living and true God, whose name was known and whose 
word was heard in Israel, that excelled in virtue the ima- 
ginary deities before whose images all men else were pros- 
trated. But the least in the kingdom of God is greater than 
they. Even patriarchs and prophets, though termed holy 
men, were not without some dark lineaments of a sinfu 
race. Noah, Daniel, and Job are pre-eminently distinguished 
in the Old Testament Scriptures for their righteousness: 
but in the word of that God before whom all things are na- 
ked and open, their faults are not hid. Scarcely had the 
waters subsided from off the face of the earth, when the very 
man who alone had found grace in the eyes of the Lord gave 
proof that it was not a deluge of water that could cleanse 
the soul from sin. The confession of his iniquities had a 
first place in the piety of Daniel, and at the sight of an angel 
such as ministered to Jesus, on whose word legions of them 
waited, his comeliness was turned into corruption. And Job, 
the most patient of men before Gethsemane was heard of, 
who could plead his cause and vaunt of his integrity before 
his contentious friends, no sooner felt in his soul a sense of 
the presence of an all-holy God, than he abhorred himself and 
repented in dust and ashes. 

It was given to the prophets of Israel to speak of one, on 
the like of whom none had ever looked. The heart of the 
royal and inspired Psalmist was stirred up within him, and 
his tongue was as the pen of a ready writer when he spoke 
of the things touching the king, and indited a good matter 
concerning him who was fairer than the sons of men. The 
lips of Isaiah, the evangelical prophet who chiefly testified 
of Jesus, were touched by a seraph with a live coal from 
off the altar of the Lord. But uninspired men must ever fal- 
ter and fail in attempting to describe " the glory as of the 
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and of truth," as 
it shone through the veil of mortal flesh, while Jesus dwelt 
among us. The sacred theme, when approached, ever 
seems to say, "Touch me not." And it is not for human 
lips to tell how worthy is the Lamb whom angels worship. 
Even skeptics, though they discern but a shade of the true 
glory of his character, have confessedly held it to be unpar- 
alleled. And an appeal may here be made to' those who did 
not profess to rank among the followers of Jesus. 

" If ever man was God or God man," says Byron, " Jesus 
Christ was both." " I will confess to you farther," says 
Rousseau, " that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me 
with admiration, as the purity of the gospel hath its influence 
on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers, with 
all their pomp of diction ; how mean, how contemptible are 
they compared with the Scriptures ! Is it possible that a, 

D d 2 



318 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

book, at once so simple and sublime, should be merely the 
work of man? Is it possible that the sacred personage, 
whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man ? 
Do we find that he assumed the air of an enthusiast or am- 
bitious sectary 1 What sweetness, what purity in his man- 
ners ! what an affecting gracefulness in his delivery ! what 
sublimity in his maxims ! what profound wisdom in his dis- 
courses ! what presence of mind, what subtilty, what truth 
in his replies ! how great the command over his passions ! 
Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live 
and so die, without weakness and without ostentation 1 
When Plato described his imaginary good man, loaded with 
all the shame of guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of 
virtue, he describes exactly the character of Jesus Christ; 
the resemblance was so striking that all the fathers per- 
ceived it. 

" What prepossession, what blindness must it be, to com- 
pare the son of Sophroniscus to the son of Mary ! what an 
infinite disproportion there is between them ! Socrates, 
dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his char- 
acter to the last ; and if his death, however easy, had not 
crowned his life, it might have been doubted whether Soc- 
rates, with all his wisdom, was anything more than a vain 
sophist. But where could Jesus learn, among his compa- 
triots, that pure and sublime morality of which he only hath 
given us both precept and example ? The greatest wisdom 
was made known amid the most bigoted fanaticism ; and 
the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honour to the 
vilest people on the earth. The death of Socrates, peace- 
ably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agree- 
able that could be wished for ; that of Jesus, expiring in the 
midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, cursed by a whole 
nation, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, 
in receiving the cup of poison, blessed, indeed, the weeping 
executioner who administered it ; but Jesus, in the midst of 
excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. 
Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the 
life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we sup- 
pose the evangelic history a mere fiction 1 Indeed, my friend, 
it bears not the marks of fiction ; on the contrary, the history 
of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well 
attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition, in 
fact, only shifts the difficulty, without removing it ; it is more 
inconceivable that a number of persons should agree to write 
such a history, than that one only should furnish the subject 
of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, 
and strangers to the morality contained in the gospel, the 
marks of whose truths are so striking and inimitable, that 



TO THE MESSXAHSH1P OP JESUS. 319 

the inventor would be a more astonishing character than 
the hero."* 

Rousseau, as if to confirm his testimony as that of an en- 
emy, added, " I cannot believe the Scriptures." A cause of 
his unbelief may be found in his own confessions ; for there 
is, according to the Scriptures, an evil heart of unbelief. 
" Because I tell you the truth," said Jesus, " ye believe me 
not. How can ye believe who receive glory one of another, 
and not that glory which cometh from God only. Had ye 
believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of 
me ; but if ye believe not his sayings, how can ye believe 
my words ?" Rousseau did not believe Moses and the proph- 
ets, else he would have believed in Jesus ; for his testimony 
concerning him is a response to their words. If they speak 
not according to this word, saith the prophet, it is because there 
is no light in them.] " How mean, how contemptible are the 
works of our philosophers compared with the Scriptures," 
says the man who did not believe them. Behold, my servant 
shall deal prudently. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause 
his voice to be heard in the street. The king cometh unto thee, 
just and lowly. % " Do we find that Jesus assumed the air of 
an enthusiast or ambitious sectary? Where is the man — 
that could so live without weakness and without ostentation ?" 
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him thatbring- 
ethgood tidings, that publisheth peace, that publisheth salvation. § 
Grace is poured into thy lips. " What sweetness, what purity 
in his manners ! what an affecting gracefulness in his deliv- 
ery !" / will put my ivords in his mouth,\\ saith the Lord. 
" What sublimity in his maxims !" saith the skeptic. The 
spirit of wisdom and understanding shall rest upon him ; the 
spirit of counsel, and might, and knowledge, and shall make him 
of quick understanding .% " What profound wisdom in his dis- 
courses ! what presence of mind, what subtilty, what truth 
in his replies!" I have set my face like a flint ; he was op- 
pressed and afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth,** " What 
command over his passions !" Thou art fairer than the chil- 
dren of men. Behold my servant whom I uphold. f f " Where 
is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and so 
die, without weakness and without ostentation V* He had 
done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth ; yet it 
pleased the Lord to bruise him ; he hath put him to grief. He 
shall bear their iniquities ; therefore will I divide him a portion 
with the great, because he hath poured out his soul unto death. 

* Rousseau's Emilius, vol. ii., p. 218. Quoted in Brewster's Testimo- 
nies. 

t Isa. viii., 20. % Isa. 111., 13 ; xlii., 2. Zech. ix., 9. 

§ Isa. lii., 7. Psal. xlv., 2. || Deut. xviii., 18. 

f Isa. xi., 2. ** Isa. 1., 7 

ft Psal. xlv., 2. Isa. xlii., 1. 



320 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

He did not hide his face from shame. " When Plato described 
his imaginary good man, loaded with all the shame of guilt, 
yet meriting the highest reward of fortune, he describes ex- 
actly the character of Jesus Christ : the resemblance was 
so striking that all the fathers perceived it." The resem- 
blance between the character of the Messiah and the history 
of Jesus is so striking, that infidels, if not blind, may per- 
ceive it, and be convinced of sin because they believed not 
in him. And conjoining the testimony of the prophets with 
the farther confessions of an enemy, it may be seen that 
the doctrines and death of Jesus, like his life, were divine. 
I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, and 
will put my ivords in his mouth. Israel doth not know ; a sin- 
ful nation, a people laden with iniquity, 6$c. I have spread out 
my hands all the day to a rebellious people. By his hnowledge 
shall my righteous servant justify many. Out of Zion shall go 
forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He 
ivill magnify the law, and make it honourable.* " Where could 
Jesus learn, among his compatriots, that pure and sublime 
morality, of which he only hath given us both precept and 
example? The greatest wisdom was made known amid the 
most bigoted fanaticism ; and the simplicity of the most he- 
roic virtues did honour to the vilest people on the earth." 
He was rejected, reviled, despised, abhorred by the nation, 
laughed to scorn ; we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, 
and afflicted ; he was wounded, bruised, scourged, oppressed, of- 
flicted, cut off out of the land of the living ; he poured out his 
soul unto death. His visage was marred more than any man ; 
his form more than the sons of men. " The death of Jesus, ex- 
piring in the midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, cursed 
by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared." 
He bare the sins of many, and made intercession for the trans- 
gressors. " Jesus, in the midst of excruciating tortures, 
prayed for his merciless tormentors." 

It was the peculiar office of the prophets of Israel, gifted 
with an infinitely higher inspiration than that of genius, to 
delineate the character of the Son of the Highest, who, at 
the time appointed, was to be manifested in the flesh. The 
evangelists wrote the history of Christ's life and death ; from 
their record, drawn from the life, Rousseau delineated the 
character of Jesus ; and hence arises the conformity between 
his description and the prophetic testimony concerning the 
Messiah. 

Each incident of the life of Jesus was an illustration of the 
Messiah's character and doctrine. In the land of Galilee, 
where first he preached, the people, according to the prophecy, 
who walked in darkness, saw a great light, and upon them who 

* Dent, xviii., 18. Isa. i., 3, 4; lxv., 2; lv., 2; liii. ; ii, 3; xlii., 21. 



TO THE MESSIAHSH1P OF JESUS. 321 

dwelt in the shadow of death the light did shine. And illiterate 
and abject Galileans, as they were contemptuously denomi- 
nated, who were themselves long unable to comprehend u the 
sublimity of his maxims" or the divinity of his demeanour, 
recorded the actions and sayings of Jesus, whom they fol- 
lowed as their master, and whose witnesses they were. And 
thus that which genius could not fancy was exemplified in 
fact ; and a pattern of perfect virtue was set before the world ; 
and the light shone in darkness, and, as also foretold, the dark- 
ness comprehended it not. 

Yet the light of his life, as well as the light of his words, 
needs but to be truly seen in order to enlighten every man 
that cometh into the world. Though there was no beauty 
in him " to draw "the carnal eye," and his earthly lot was the 
poorest and the hardest, yet the man of sorrows was the Lord 
our righteousness, and in him we behold, as in a glass, the 
glory of the Lord. He was fairer than the children of men ; 
grace was poured into his lips ; therefore God hath blessed him 
for ever. He loved righteousness and hated wickedness : and he 
was the righteous servant of the Lord. In the volume of God's 
book it was written of him, he came to do, as well as to reveal, 
the will of God. And he always did the things that pleased 
Him. Even when wearied and a hungered he sought no rest, 
and left untasted the food that was brought him that he might 
preach the gospel to those who, even from a city of the Sa- 
maritans, came forth to hear him : " for," he said, " it is my 
meat to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his 
work." Such was his devotedness to well-doing, that he went 
about continually doing good. Such was his exclusive re- 
gard to his Father's will and his Father's work, that, even to 
her whose seed, according to the flesh, he was, he could say, 
" Woman, what have I to do with thee V Such was his love 
of righteousness, that, when his mother and his brethren sent 
unto him, while he sat with his disciples and was teaching 
the people, he looked on those that were about him and said, 
" Behold my mother and my brethren, for whosoever shall 
do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, 
and mother." Yet there was no moral derangement in the 
balance of his virtues, for all were alike perfect. And such, 
as a man, was his filial obedience, and the example which 
he gave to every son and stepson on earth, that after the 
doctors in the temple had been astonished at his wisdom while 
yet a youth, he went home at the bidding of his parents and 
was obedient unto them ; and, at the last, even the excru- 
ciating agonies of the cross could not restrain him from ex- 
emplifying the affection of a son and the confidence of a 
friend, and thus giving, by the legacy of his dying lips, a son 
to his mother, and a mother to the disciple whom he loved. 
Such was his haired of wickedness, that, when the apostle Pe- 



322 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

ter spoke as savouring not the things that be of God, but those 
that be of men, he addressed him in the language of reproof 
and rep^bation, as if he had spoken to the tempter in the 
wilderne% again. With a word he at once brake down the 
pride of a self-righteous Pharisee, and revived the spirit of a 
contrite sinner. A needful wound was given to the care- 
troubled Martha by the physician and friend of both, while 
balm, like that of Gilead, was administered to the accused but 
acquitted, because heavenly-minded, Mary. 

Such was the spirit of wisdom which he manifested, and so 
prudently did he deal, that all who heard him were astonished 
at his words ; his enemies, who framed devices to ensnare 
him, and appealed to his judgment in order to tempt him, were 
baffled and confounded at his answers ; though hired spies 
watched his words and sought to entangle him in his talk, 
yet so effectually did he silence them that no man durst ask 
him a question ; and even from the superscription on a penny 
he could free himself from their wiles, and teach his insidious 
foes what they sought not to learn, their duty at once to their 
king and to their God. He who judged not after the sight of 
his eyes, but knew what was in man, unveiled alike the hearts 
of his disciples and of his enemies ; and showed the guileless, 
but at first incredulous Nathanael, that the deep shade of the 
fig-tree could not hide his body or his mind from his all-see- 
ing eye ; he laid hypocrisy open and bare, and showed the 
corruption with which the whited sepulchres were full ; and 
he told how the hand, which was dipped with his own in the 
dish, was that of the traitor. 

Benevolence and compassion, like every virtue, were iden- 
tified with the name and nature of Jesus. He who would 
not exercise his Divine power to satisfy his own hunger, 
would not send one of the hungry multitude, who had come 
forth to hear him, empty away. He who voluntarily gave 
himself to suffering and death, healed all manner of sicknesses 
and diseases among the people. His acts of Divine power 
manifested that God is love. He made the lame to walk, the 
deaf to hear, the blind to see ; they who were brought to him 
on beds departed bearing that whereon they lay; with- 
ered hands were stretched forth at his command ; paralytics 
arose in perfect soundness before him ; and, wherever he 
went, these were the witnesses which he chose to show 
that his word was that of God, and that power was given him 
on earth to forgive sins. Of the diseased bodies of men then 
(as of their spirits now) it is related that as many as touched 
him were made perfectly whole. There went virtue out of 
him and healed them all. 

Meek and lowly, he came unto Jerusalem as the prophet 
had beheld him in a vision, sitting on an ass's colt. But who 
declared the generation of him who washed his disciples' feet, 



TO THE MBSSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 323 

and left a pattern of condescension and kindness for Christians 
to imitate towards u one another'?" Such was his sympathy 
for human sorrow, that, while others stood around two mourn- 
ing sisters weeping for a brother's death, Jesus wept. Such 
was his pity for the souls of men, that, in coming as its king 
to Zion, amid the hosannahs of the multitude, he looked not 
to Calvary, where he was soon to die, but he beheld Jerusa- 
lem and wept over it, in bitter and affecting lamentation for 
its hardened impenitence and approaching desolation. Such 
was his disinterestedness and compassionate tenderness, and 
so entirely did he look to the things of others, not his own, 
that he came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and 
to give his life a ransom for many. When a rude band went 
forth with swords and staves, as against a thief, to take him, 
he said, " Whom seek ye 1" " Here am I ;" " If ye seek me, let 
these go away." And when literally bearing his cross, he 
turned unto the women which bewailed and lamented him, 
and said, " Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but 
weep for yourselves and for your children." 

Never was there a- record of any sufferings like those of 
Jesus ; nor ever else was there an instance of an agony of 
soul that forced from the human body a sweat of blood, fall- 
ing in large drops upon the ground. And " the most horrible 
death that can be conceived," even as its outward circum- 
stances are alone regarded, show how Jesus was made per- 
fect by suffering, and how his death, like his life, is a witness 
that he was the Son of God, the Messiah who gave his soul 
an offering for sin. 

W T hen he cometh into the world, he saith, sacrifice and of- 
fering thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou prepared me. 
But his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form 
more than the sons of men. Yet he was not rebellious nor turned 
away back. But he gave his back to the smiters and his cheeks 
to them that plucked off the hair ; he did not hide his face from 
shame and spitting, but set his face as a flint. As a sheep before 
her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. They shall 
smite the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. 

Thus prophets testified beforehand the devotedness, intre- 
pidity, and patience, all alike Divine, as well as the sufferings 
of him who was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and whose 
death was typified every year in every house in Jerusalem 
by the slaying of the paschal lamb. 

The determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God con- 
cerning the Messiah was declared and revealed in his in- 
spired word. And in suffering, as in doing, he fulfilled the 
will of the Father till it was finished, and the things that were 
written concerning him had an end. He did not turn away 
lack, but he set his face as a flint, " And it came to pass, when 
the time was come that he should be received up, he stead- 



324 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

fastlyset Ms face to go to Jerusalem"* In the garden of Geth- 
semane, before the traitor approached, and while no hand of 
man was upon him, his words bespoke unutterable wo, his 
soul was exceeding sorrowful even unto death, his body was 
covered with tokens of far greater agony than flesh alone 
could bear or bodily torture excite ; and yet, while he could 
not but pray that the cup might pass from him, to that prayer 
another was ever added, time after time, denoting the full and 
firm purpose of his voluntarily-devoted, though wounded, op- 
pressed, and afflicted, yet unalterable soul, " O my Father, 
if this cup may not pass from me except I drink it, thy will 
be done ; not my will, but thine be done." His soul was brought 
down unto the dust of death. He fell on the ground, which 
was covered with blood, not shed by any mortal hand nor 
flowing from any human wound ; he went to his disciples and 
found them sleeping, yet he turned not back nor changed his 
prayer ; but, on the repeated renewal of his agony, he repeat- 
ed the same words a second time and a third. " For this 
cause," he said, " came I unto this hour." 

When the traitor and his band were at hand, Jesus went 
forth and said unto ihem, " Whom seek yeT' At the words 
" I am" from his lips, they went backward and fell to the 
ground. The voluntary victim asked them again. And when 
they then laid hands on Jesus, and took him, he said unto 
Peter, who had stretched forth an arm of flesh, and smitten 
with the sword for his defence and rescue, " Put up again thy 
sword into his place. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray 
to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than 
twelve legions of angels 1 But how, then, shall the Scriptures 
le fulfilled, that thus it must be ?"f And as he went, soon after, 
to the place of crucifixion, he turned not back, but in re- 
sponding to the sympathy of his weeping followers, he ex- 
pressed his care for other sorrows than his own. 

Jesus was taken from judgment, or judicially condemned. 
When questioned by the high priest concerning his disciples 
and his doctrine, he sought not to conceal aught, but appeal- 
ed to the manner in which he had spoken openly to the 
world, and to the testimony of those who had heard him. 
An officer who stood by, offended at the answer, having smit- 
ten him with a rod, J he said, as becoming the righteous judge 
of Israel, which the ignominious blow itself farther approved 
him to be, " If 1 have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil ; 
but if well, why smitest thou me ?"§ When adjured by the 
living God to tell whether he was the Christ, the Son of 
God, he was a witness to the truth for which he died ; and, 
given as he was for a witness to the people, he answered in a 

* Luke ix., 51. + Matt, xxvi., 53. 54. % pamfffxa. 

§ John, xviii., 19-23. Isa. lv., 4. 



TO THE MESSIAHSHir. OF JESUS. 325 

word, M I am." Convicted of blasphemy because of the word, 
he " answered nothing*' to all of the accusations against him ; 
nor could all the cruelties and indignities he endured extort 
from him a word of impatient complaint. The magnanim- 
ity of Jesus triumphed over all the malice of his enemies. 
Blindfolded, buffeted, smitten on the face, and laughed to scorn, 
he patiently bore it. He did not turn his cheek from the 
rod, nor his back from the scourge. From shame and spitting 
he did not hide his face. Oppressed by the wicked, and com- 
passed about by his deadly enemies^ a reproach of man and de- 
spised of the people, he saw how they did shoot out the Up, and 
shake the head, and gape on him icith their mouths ; he heard 
their insulting scoffs, their bitter derision, their bloodthirsty 
cry of Crucify him, crucify him : and knowing that all these 
wore ingredients in the cup which his Father had given him 
to drink, of which he said, " shall I not drink of it ? M and 
that these things were all numbered among his sufferings, 
and written concerning him in the volume of the book of 
God,* to whom it was his prayer, " thy will, and not mine.be 
done," that word he would fulfil, and that will he would do, 
God he would glorify, man he would save, everlasting right- 
eousness he would bring in; the chastisement of his people's 
peace, together with their sins, he would bear ; the serpent's 
head he would bruise, though his own form should be marred; 
the curse of a broken law he would bear, though his own 
body should be broken ; and the penalty of sin he would pay, 
though his soul was the offering. And, appearing in the 
stead of the guilty, when he was reviled, he reviled not 
again: when he suffered, he threatened not; but, innocent 
as a lamb, he was dumb as a sheep before her shearers, and 
answered not a word. But while not a murmuring accent 
fell from his lips, and patience had in him its perfect pattern 
and its perfect work, he who taught his followers to pray for 
those who despitefully used them, gave the example from 
the cross, and made intercession for the transgressors who 
nailed him to the accursed tree, exulted in his humiliation, 
and made a mockery of his woes. The sight of Jesus on 
the cross was enough to make the Roman centurion exclaim, 
" Truly this was a righteous man ; truly this was the Son of 
God." And who that believes in Moses and the prophets 
must not be constrained to say, truly this is the very Christ ? 
What eye — darker than that of Rousseau, and shut against 
all perception of moral worth and of spiritual excellence — 
does not see, with the light of truth, the beauty of holiness 
in the character of Jesus, and behold in him, and in him 
alone, one fairer than the sons of men. And set apart thus, 
as he was by the prophets, from all men besides, and testified 

* Mic. v., 1. Ps. xxii., 7. Isa. 1,6 ; liii., 7. Ps. cix., 3 ; xxii., 6, 7 13- 

E E 



326 TESTIMONY OP THE PROPHETS 

of by them all, who does not see with the demonstration of 
sight that he who thus lived and died is the righteous ser- 
vant of the Lord and the anointed Saviour of men 1 The tes- 
timony of the prophets is an unction from on high, poured 
visibly on his sacred head. The Spirit of Prophecy may be 
seen descending and resting on Jesus, as the same Spirit in 
another dovelike form was seen by the Baptist alighting on 
him. And the least in the kingdom of God, who gives heed 
to the sure word of prophecy, is greater than the man who 
sent unto Christ and asked him, Art thou he that should 
come, or look we for another 1 For assuredly there is none 
other in whom that word of prophecy can be fulfilled, and 
there is none other name given under heaven or named 
among men by which we can be saved.. 

The humiliation, sufferings, and death of Jesus were urged 
by heathens who believed not in the prophets, as proofs that 
Christ was not the Son of God. But in these very things 
we read the sure credentials of his Messiahship. The doc- 
trines of the gospel have in like manner been the scoff of 
modern infidels ; and neologists, retaining the name of Chris- 
tians, wrest the Scriptures according to their fancy, and 
seek to render them credible, or to reconcile them to rea- 
son, by substituting the word of man for that of God ! But 
the sayings of Scripture are faithful and worthy of all accep- 
tation, as the service which it enjoins is reasonable, and 
alone forms the freedom of the soul. And such is the har- 
mony between the words of the prophets and the writings 
of apostles, that, if the gospel be altered, the evidence is 
destroyed. It is the faith once delivered to the saints, for 
which Christians have earnestly to contend, as that which 
alone rests on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, 
Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone. If anoth- 
er gospel be preached, prophets and apostles alike disown 
it ; and it is neither the doctrine of the Messiah nor the faith 
of Jesus. To be rationally believed, according to the testi- 
mony of God by the prophets, the doctrines of the gospel 
must needs be what they are. And if men be not corrupted 
from the simplicity that is in Christ, all the articles of their 
faith are reasons of their hope, as forming the very salvation 
which the Lord did promise. 

The divine character of the divine Redeemer, as depicted 
by the prophets and drawn from the life, is but one of the 
themes pertaining to his Messiahship which are interwoven 
in the prophecies concerning him. The mystery of godli- 
ness, foretold of old and decreed from the beginning, and 
which angels desired to pry into, was revealed when the 
Son of God was manifest in the flesh, and the Scriptures 
were fulfilled. The doctrine of the cross, or of the expia- 
tion of sin by his sufferings and deathj is intimately con- 



TO THE MESSIAHSH1P OF JESUS. 327 

joined in the selfsame passages of holy writ, alike in the 
Old Testament as in the New. And marvellous as the his- 
tory of Jesus is, all the wonders which it unfolds are plainly 
written in the prophetic word, which often speaks in the 
same sentence of his divine and human nature, of his humil- 
iation and his glory. 

He who was to bruise the head of the serpent was the 
same seed of the woman whose own heel was to be bruised. 
He who was called Immaiuiel, God with us, was born of a 
virgin. A child was born and a son was given, on whose 
shoulder is the government, whose name is the Mighty God, 
the Prince of Peace, of the increase of whose government 
and peace there shall be no end. Out of Bethlehem Ephra- 
tah, little among the thousands of Israel, has he come forth, 
whose goings forth were of old from everlasting. And this 
prophetic announcement of the birthplace of Jesus was sub- 
joined to the declaration, they shall smite the Judge of Israel 
with a rod upon the cheek. He at whose triumphant en- 
trance into Jerusalem the daughter of Zion shouted and re- 
joiced greatly, and who came to Jerusalem as its king, lowly 
and riding upon a colt the foal of an ass, is he who has spo- 
ken peace to the heathen, while the chariot has been cut off 
from Ephraim and the battle-bow from Jerusalem, and whose 
dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the river to the 
ends of the earth, and by the blood of whose covenant it is 
that the prisoners of Zion are yet to be sent forth out of the 
pit wherein is no water. Of the thirty pieces of silver given 
for the price of Jesus, the Lord said by his prophets, a good- 
ly price that I was prized at of them. Jesus was wounded 
in the house of his friends ; and the shepherd was smitten, 
of whom the prophets speak, " The man that is my fellow, 
saith the Lord of hosts." He has been exalted and extolled, 
and is very high, whose visage was so marred more than 
any man. He who was wounded for our transgressions, and 
bruised for our iniquities, has sprinkled many nations. Kings 
have shut their mouths at him who was led as a lamb to the 
slaughter and opened not his mouth. He who was cut off 
out of the land of the living has seen his seed and prolonged 
his days. The pleasure of the Lord has prospered in his 
hands, whom we did esteem smitten of God and afflicted. 
He who gave his soul an offering for sin, has seen of the 
travail of his soul, and is satisfied. The righteous servant 
of the Lord has justified many by his knowledge, even be- 
cause he did bear their iniquities. And the Lord hath divi- 
ded unto him a portion with the great, and he has divided 
the spoil with the strong, who was numbered with the trans- 
gressors, and poured out his soul unto death,* Though Is* 

* Isa. lii., liii. 



328 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS 

rael would not be gathered, the servant of the Lord, who is 
yet to raise up the tribes of Jacob, is a light to the Gentiles, 
and the salvation of God to the ends of the earth : and to 
him whom man despised, to him whom the nation abhorred, 
kings have seen and arisen, princes also have worshipped, 
because of the Lord that is faithful, and the Holy One of 
Israel who did choose him.* He too it was who gave his 
back to the smiters, to whom the Lord gave the tongue of 
the learned, and who knew how to speak a word in season 
to him that is weary.f The same set time was appointed 
upon the Jews and upon Jerusalem to finish the transgres- 
sion, to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for 
iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal 
up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. 
And the selfsame prophecy affirms that Messiah the prince 
was to be cut off before the city and the sanctuary should be 
destroyed. The stone which the builders refused is become 
the head of the corner. And he against whom, as the An- 
ointed of the Lord, the kings of the earth set themselves, and 
the rulers took counsel, is the king whom God hath set upon 
his holy hill of Zion, to whom the heathen shall be given for 
his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his 
possession. 

For the " coming war of opinions" which earthly politicians 
now at last see to- be approaching, Christians are prepared ; 
for though they may not be able to define its development, 
it is given to them to know its issue. The field of reason is al- 
ready filling with avengers on the enemy, and he must choose 
other ground. The progress of light is shaking his kingdom 
of darkness ; and we know that when his time is short, his 
rage shall be great. And were the prince of darkness, the 
god of this world, to congregate his vassals, and combine 
his marked and motley forces against the faithful of the Lord ; 
were the adversaries of the gospel to try at last, as at the 
first, to suppress or expiate Divine truth by brutal force, the 
prophetic testimony would thereby receive fresh confirma- 
tion ; " the times and the seasons," which the Father hath in 
his power, and which are written in his word, when error 
shall accelerate its ruin, and the mystery of iniquity be abol- 
ished, would then be determined ; the question would be re- 
solved to whom it is that all power belongeth ; and when the 
last of mortal combats shall be over, and they that take the 
sword shall perish with the sword, the greatness of the king- 
dom under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of 
the saints of the Most High; and though carnal weapons be 
not fitted for Christians' hands, their feet shall be dipped in 
the blood of their enemies ; infidelity shall be overthrown, 

* Isa. xlix., 5-7. t Isa. L, 4, 6. 



TO THE MESSIAHSH1P OF JESUS, 329 

idolatry shall be abolished, desolations shall cease, truth shall 
prevail ; the Spirit by whom the prophets spake shall, accord- 
ing to their word, be poured upon all flesh ; righteousness shall 
flourish, and peace abound; the word of the Lord, yet unac- 
complished, shall be fulfilled ; the mystery of God shall be 
finished, as he hath declared by his servants the prophets, and 
(to comprehend and close our whole theme in one blessed 
word) knowledge shall be the stability of the times of the 
Messiah. 

E e2 



APPENDIX. 



No. I.— See p. 48-50. 

Jcjsques a quand 1'homme importunera-t-il les cieux d'une injuste plainte ? 
Jusquesa quand, par de vaines clameurs accusera-t-il le soRTdeses maux? 
Ses yeux seront-ils done tou jours fermes a la lumiere, et son cceur aux in- 
sinuations de la verite et de la raison? Elle s'offre partout a lui, cette 
verite lumineuse, et il ne la voit point ! Le cri de la raison frappe son ore- 
ille, et il ne l'entend pas ! Homme injuste ! si tu peux un instant suspen- 
dre le prestige qui fascine tes sens ! si ton coeur est capable de comprendre 
le langage du raisonnement, interroge ces rumes ! Lis les lecons qu'elles 
te presentent ! . . . Et vous, temoins de vingt siecles divers, temples saints ! 
tombeaux venerables ! murs jadis glorieux, paraissez dans la cause de la 
nature mime ! Venez au tribunal d'un sain entendement deposer contre une 
accusation injuste ! venez confondre les declamations d'une fausse sagesse 
ou d'une piete hypocrite, et vengez la terre et les cieux de 1'homme qui les 
calomnie ! — Les Ruins, c. iii. CEuvres de Volney, torn, i., p. 13. 

O noms a jamais glorieux ! champs celebres, contrees memorables ! 
combien votre aspect presente de lecons profondes ! combien de verites sub- 
limes sont ecntes sur la surface de cette terre ! Souvenirs des temps 
passes, revenez a ma pensee. Lieux temoins de la vie de 1'homme en tant 
de divers ages, retracez-moi les revolutions de sa fortune ! Dites quels en 
furent les mobiles et les ressorts ! Dites a quelles sources il puisa ses suc- 
ces et ses disgraces ! Devoiles a lui-meme les causes de ses maux ! Re- 
dressez-le par la vue de ses erreurs ! Enseignes-lui sa propre sagesse, et 
que l'experience des races passees devienne un tableau d'instruction et un 
germe de bonheur pour les races presentes et futures ! — Ibid., c. iv., p. 25. 



No. II.— See p. 59. 

EXTRACT FROM LETTER OF HUME TO DR. CAMPBELL. 

It may perhaps amuse you to learn the first hint which suggested to me 
that argument which you have so strenuously attacked. I was walking in 
the cloisters of the Jesuits' College of La Fleche (a town in which I passed 
two years of my youth), and was engaged in conversation with a Jesuit of 
some parts and learning, who was relating to me and urging some nonsen- 
sical miracle performed lately in -their convent, when I was tempted to dis- 
pute against him ; and as my head was full of the topics of my Treatise of 
Human Nature, which I was at that time composing, this argument imme- 
diately occurred to me, and I thought it very much gravelled my compan- 
ion. But at last he observed to me that it was impossible for that argu- 
ment to have any solidity, because it operated equally against the Gospel 
as the Catholic miracles, which observation I thought proper to admit as a 
sufficient answ r er. I believe you will allow that the freedom at least of this 
reasoning makes it somewhat extraordinary to have been the produce of a 
convent of Jesuits, though perhaps you may think that the sophistry of it 
savours of the place of its birth. — Campbell's Lectures on Ecclesiastical His 
tory, Edinburgh, June 7, 1762. 



332 APPENDIX. 



No. III.— See p. 94. 

CONCURRING TESTIMONY OF ANCIENT AND CHIEFLY HEATHEN «VltiTERS, 
TO HISTORICAL FACTS RECORDED BY MOSES. 

(Adduced by Grotius, De Veritate ) i., 16.) 

The nations which most rigidly retained ancient customs reckoned time 
by nights, darkness having originally preceded light, as Thales taught from 
the ancients. The remembrance of the completion of the work of creation 
on the seventh day was preserved by the honour in which the seventh day 
was held, not only among the Greeks and Italians, as we learn from Josephus, 
Philo, Tibullus, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Lucian (and, as is manifest, 
among the Hebrews), but also among the Celts and Indians, by all of whom 
time was divided by weeks, as Philostratus, Dion Cassius, and Justin Mar- 
tyr inform us, and as the most ancient names of the days do show. From 
the Egyptians we learn that man's life at the beginning was simple or in- 
nocent, and that his body was naked ; hence the golden age of the poets, 
which, according to Strabo, was celebrated by the Indians. Maimonides 
remarked that the history of Adam, of Eve, of the tree, and of the serpent, 
existed in his time among the idolatrous Indians ; and witnesses likewise 
of our own age testify that the same tradition exists among the inhabitants 
of Peru and of the Philippian Islands, who derived their origin from India ; 
that the name of Adam is found among the Brahmins, and that the Siamese 
reckon 6000 years since the creation of the world. Berosus in his history 
of the Chaldeans, Manetho in that of the Egyptians, Haestiaeus, Hecatseus, 
Halbanicus in their histories of Greece, and Hesiod among the poets, have 
related that the life of those who were descended of the first men extended 
to nearly a thousand years, which is the less incredible, as the histories of 
a great many nations, and especially Pausanias and Philostratus among the 
Greeks, and Pliny among the Romans, relate that the bodies of men in an- 
cient times were much larger, as was found by opening the tombs. Catul- 
lus, following many of the Greek writers, relates that divine visions ap- 
peared to man before the frequency and enormity of his offences secluded 
him from converse with the Deity and his angels. The savage life of the 
giants mentioned by Moses is almost everywhere spoken of by the Greek 
writers, and some of the Roman. Concerning the deluge it is to be re- 
marked, that the traditions of all nations, even of those which were long un- 
known, and have been recently discovered, terminate in its history ; whence 
also all that time was called unknown by Varro. And what we read in the 
poets, mystified by the license of fable, the most ancient writers had re- 
lated truly, i. e., agreeably to Moses, viz., Berosus among the Chaldeans, 
Abydinus among the Assyrians, who, like Plutarch among the Greeks, 
mentions the sending forth of the dove, and Lucian, who says that at Hie- 
rapolis of Syria there existed a very ancient history both of the ark, and of 
chosen men and other living creatures having thereby been preserved. At 
Molo also and at Nicholaus Damascenus the same account prevailed, the 
latter of which had the name of ark, as Apollodorus also relates in.the his- 
tory of Deucalion. Many Spaniards likewise testify that in parts of Amer- 
ica, Cuba, Mechoana, Nicaragua, the remembrance of the deluge, of the 
preservation of animals, and of the crow and pigeon, is still preserved ; and 
of the deluge itself, in that part now called Golden Castile, and Pliny's re- 
mark that Joppa was built before the flood, informs us of a part of the 
world which was then inhabited. The place where the ark rested after the 
flood, on the Gordysean mountains, is pointed to by the constant tradition 
of the Armenians, from age to age, till the present day. Japhet, the primo- 
genitor of the Europeans, and from him Ion, or, as it was formerly pro- 
nounced, Javon of the Greeks, also Hammon of the Africans, are names to 
be found in the writings of Moses, and others are traced by Josephus and 



APPENDIX. 33fc 

other writers in the names of nations and places. Which of the poets does 
not mention the attempt to climb the heavens ? The burning of Sodom is 
recorded by Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Tacitus, Pliny, and Solenius. He- 
rodotus, Diodorus, Strabo, and Philo Biblius bear testimony to the very 
ancient custom of circumcision, which was practised among the descend 
ants of Abraham ; not the Hebrews only, but also the Idumeans, Ishmaelites, 
and others. The history of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, in accord- 
ance with that of Moses, formerly existed in Philo Biblius, taken from San- 
choniathon in Berosus, Hecataeus, Damascenus, Artaphanus, Eupolimus, 
Demetrius, and partly in the very ancient writers of the Orphic songs, and 
something of it is still extant in Justin, taken from Trogus Pompeius. In 
almost all these there is also a history of Moses and his actions. For the 
Orphic songs expressly mention that he was drawn out of the water, and 
that two tables were given him from God. To these we may add Pole- 
mon, and not a few things relating to the departure out of Egypt, from the 
Egyptian writers Manetho, Lysimachus, and Chaeremon. Nor can it ap- 
pear credible to any prudent man, that Moses, to whom both the Egyptians 
and many other nations, as the Idumeans, Arabians, and Phoenicians, were 
hostile, would have dared to speak openly of the origin of the world and of 
the most ancient events, which could be refuted either by former writings, 
or was opposed to the ancient and popular belief, or that he would have 
published what happened in his own time, which many then alive could 
have disproved. Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pliny, also Tacitus, and after 
them Dionysius Longmus (on the Sublime) all speak of Moses. Besides 
the Talmuds, Pliny and Apoleius mention also Jamnes and Mambres, whc 
resisted Moses in Egypt. Many things are found in the Pythagorean wri- 
tings about the rites given by Moses, and also some things in other writers 
Strabo and Justin, out of Trogus, particularly bear witness to the religion 
and justice of the ancient Jews, &c. 



N<3. IV.— See p. 98, 99. 

EXTRACT FROM PLAYPAIR's OUTLINES OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 

By comparing very distant observations, it is found that the line of the 
apsides, or the longer axis of the sun's orbit, has a progressive motion, or a 
motion eastward ; so that the apsis recedes from the vernal equinox 62'', or 
by De Lambre's Tables 61"9 annually. 

a. This motion includes the precession of the equinoctial points, which 
is in the opposite direction, and amounts to 50"-25 ; so that the real motion 
of the apsides eastward, in respect of the fixed stars, is ll"-65 a year, or 
19.4"l-6 in a century. 

b. Hence there is a difference between the tropical year or the time of 
the sun's revolution from equinox to equinox, and what is called the anom- 
alistic year, or the time of the sun's revolution from either apsis to the 
same apsis again. As the apsis has gone in the same direction with the 
sun over 62" in a year, the sun must come to the place where the apsis was 
at the beginning of the year, and must move over 62" more before the anom- 
alistic year is completed. The time required to this is "01748 of a day, 
which, added to the tropical year, gives 365 d .259,744, or 365 d , 6 h , 14 m ,2*for 
the anomalistic— Biot. Astron., torn, ii., § 91. 

c. The line of the apsides, thus continually moving round, must at one 
period have coincided with the line of the equinoxes. The lower apsis or 
perigee in 1750 was 278°-6211 from the vernal equinox, according to La 
Caille; and the higher apsis was, therefore, at the distance of 98° - 6211. 
The time required to move over this arch, at the rate of 62" annually, is 
about 5722 years, which goes back nearly 4000 before our era ; a period re' 
markablefor being that to which chronologists refer the creation of the world. At 



334 APPENDIX. 

that period, the length of time during which the sun was in the northern 
signs, that is, on the north side of the equator, was precisely the same with 
that on which he was on the south, each being exactly half a year. At 
present, the apogee, where the sun's motion is slowest, being in the ninth 
degree of Cancer, more time by 7 d , 16 h , 30 m , 8 s is consumed in the northern 
than in the southern signs ; so great is the change which the motion of the 
apsides has produced. About 464 years ago, the apogee was in the begin- 
ning of Cancer. 

e. The motion of the sun's apsides being 19' 4" in a century with respect 
to the fixed stars, it requires a period of more than 108,000 years to com- 
plete their siderial revolution. Their tropical revolution is 20,903 years. — 
Play fair's Outlines of Natural Philosophy, vol. ii., p , 114-116. 



No. V.— See p. 106. 

"It is necessary to state the independent authorities on which this re- 
markable and consistent series of dates is grounded. I. The epoch of the 
kingdom of Babylon, which we venture to call the Chaldean era of the dis- 
persion, results from the 1903 years' observations which Simplicius tells us 
were discovered on the taking of Babylon by Alexander, and transmitted 
by Callisthenes to his preceptor Aristotle, compared with the 720,000 days, 
or 1971 years of observations inscribed on titles, which, according to Epigenes 
cited by Pliny, were noted m the Chaldean annals. These annals were 
dedicated by their author, Berosus, to Antiochus Theos, whose reign com- 
menced B.C. 262 ; and ascending from that date, the series of Epigenes 
point to the same commencement with that of Callisthenes, reckoned up- 
ward from B.C. 330. The earlier Chaldean dates, which suppose an in- 
tercalary cycle of 1440 years to have preceded the astronomical era of Bab- 
ylon, are given on the authority of Alexander Polyhistor, a copyist of Be- 
rosus, cited by Syncellus (p. 32 and 38, ed Par.). He estimated the ten 
antediluvian reigns at 1183 years, and an interval of 257 years between the 
deluge and the renewal of the kingdom under Enechous, or the second Be- 
lus. II. The Chinese series are from the annals produced by the fathers 
Martinius and Couplet, which are invariably dated in the years of saxage- 
nary cycles, of which the series is complete. These annals mention a par- 
tial deluge in the reign of Yao (the contemporary of Noah, Hisuthrus, and 
Chronus, according to the Hebrew, the Chaldean, and the Egyptian sys- 
tems), from whom their authentic history is supposed by the English liter- 
ati to commence. III. The first series of Indian dates are those which 
are stated in the Graho Munjari quoted by Mr. Bentley (Asiatic Researches, 
vol. viii.) The first supposes the renewal of the world at the expiration of 
a great cycle, and the second the foundation of the kingdom Megadha, at 
the end of the historical Satya age of 960 years. IV. The second series 
represent the commencement of the Cali Yuga, the admitted Hindoo era of 
the deluge, and the epoch of the kingdom of Ayodhya or Oude, and of the 
appearance of the first Buddha, when 1000 years of the Cali age had ex- 
pired. This latter will be found to fall in with the time of Thoth or Atho- 
thes, the son of Mison, the first Hermes of the Egyptians, who may have 
been the same with the first Buddha, a synchronism in connexion with the 
origin of the most ancient Egyptian and Indian temples, on which our pres- 
ent limits will not allow us to dilate. V. The Assyrian era is that of the 
ancients generally ; 1995 years before the conquest of Antiochus the Great 
by the Romans, B.C. 190, according to Omilius Lura, cited by Paterculus ; 
and 1342 years before the overthrow of the Assyrian empire by Arbaces the 
Mede, according to Castor Rhodius ; the first year of Arbaces being fixed 
to B.C. 843 by Paterculus, Africanus, and Cedrenus, Ctesias and Cepha- 
lon make the foundation of this empire to have preceded the taking of 
Troy 1000 years. All these reckonings point to B.C. 2185-3 for the ac- 



APPENDIX. 335 

cession of Belus Assyrius, the Asshur of Gen. x.. 11. VI. The Greek se- 
ries results from the date of Ogygian flood, as fixed by Varro, sixteen cen- 
turies before the first Olympiad, and the era of the little kingdom of Sicyon, 
with whose monarchs Varro commences his chronology, as we learn from 
Augustine. The latter is referred by Castor, cited by Eusebius, to the fif- 
teenth year of the Assyrian empire. This state ended immediately before 
the Trojan war, as appears by comparing the notices of Homer and Pausa- 
nias; and its period, 692 years, according to Castor, exactly coincides with 
this account. We introduce the era of Sicyon in consequence of its con- 
sistency, and because it is the only Saphalian date which applies to the 
general origin of kingdoms. Ogialeus, to whom the foundation of Sicyon, 
and the earliest name of the Morean peninsula are ascribed, may fairly be 
supposed to represent the Elisha of Gen. x., 4, &c. VII. The Egyptian 
dates of the gods, demigods, and monarchy, result from the fragment of 
the old Egyptian chronicle preserved by Syncellus. The author of this 
work, probably the contemporary of Manetho, professes to have deduced it 
from the Hermaic book, the source of Manetho's history, and on that au- 
thority refers the dynasties to the years of the canicular period, regarding 
the epochs of which Censorinus and Theon have left us in no doubt. The 
correspondence of the Egyptian era thus obtained, with our former results 
from Diodorus, Eratosthenes, and other writers, leaves nothing to be de- 
sired on this head." — Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. xii., p. 384, &c. 



No. VI.— See p. 166. 

C. PLINIUS TRAJANO IMP. S. 

Solenne est mihi, Domine, omnia de quibus, dubito, ad te referre. Quis 
enim potest melius vel cunctationem meam regere, vel ignorantiam instru- 
ere ? Cognationibus Christianorum interfui nunquam. Ideo nescio quid 
et quatenus aut puniri soleat, aut quaeri. Nee mediocriter haesitari, sitne 
aliquod discrimen setatum, an quamlibet teneri nihil a robustioribus diffe- 
rant : deturne poenitentias venia, an si qui omnine Christianus fuit, desiisse 
non prosit, nomen ipsum, etiamsi flagitiis careat, an flagitia cohaerantia no- 
mini puniantur. Interim in iis qui ad me tanquam Christiani deferebantur, 
hunc sum secutus modum. Interrogavi ipsos, an essent Christiani. Con- 
fitentesiterum ac tertio interrogavi, supplicium minatus : perseverantes duci 
jussi. Neque enim dubitabam qualecunque esset quod faterentur, pervica- 
ciam certe, et inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri. Fuerunt alii sim- 
ilis amentiae : quos quia cives Romani erant, annotavi in urbem remitten- 
dos. Mox ipsi tractu (al. tractatu), ut fieri solet, diffundente se crimine, 
plures species inciderunt. Propositus est libellus sine auctore, multorum 
nomina continens, qui negarunt se esse Christianos, aut fuisse, quum prce- 
eunte me, Deos appellarent, et imagini tuae quam propter hoc jusseramcum 
simulacris numinum afferri, vino ac thure sacrificarent, praeterea maledice- 
rent Christo ; quorum nihil cogi posse dicuntur, qui sunt revera Christiani. 
Ergo dimittendos putavi. Alii ab indice nominati, esse se Christiani dixe- 
runt, et mox negavernnt ; fuisse quidem, sed desiisse, quidam ante trien- 
nium, quidam ante plures annos, non nemo etiam ante viginti quoque. Om- 
nes et imaginem tuam, deorumque simulacra, venerati sunt. Ii et Christo 
maledixerunt. Afiirmabant autem, hanc fuisse summam vel culpae suae, 
vel erroris, quod essent soliti stato die ante lucem con venire, carmenque 
Christo, quasi Deo, dicere secuminvicem ; seque sacramentonon in scelus 
aliquod obstringere, sed ne furta, ne latrocinia, ne adulteria committerent, 
ne fidem fallerent, ne depositum appellati abnegarent; quibus peractis, 
morem sibi discedendi fuisse, rursusque coeundi ad capiendum cibum, pro- 
miscuum tamen, et innoxium ; quod et ipsum facere desiisse post edictum 
meum, quo secundum mandata tua hetaerias esse vetueram. Quo magis 



336 APPENDIX. 

necessarium credidi, ex duabus ancillis, quae ministri dicebaniur, quid es- 
set veri et per tormenta quserere. Sed nihil aliud inveni, quam superstition- 
em pravam et immodicam. Ideoque delata cognitione ad consulendum te 
decurri. Visa est enim res digna consultatione, maxime propter periclitan- 
tium numerum. Multi enim omnis aetatis, utriusque sexus etiam, vocan- 
tur in periculum et vocabuntur. Neque enim civitates tantum, sed vicos 
etiam et agros superstitionis istius contagio pervagata est. Qua? videtur 
sisti et corrigi posse certe satis constat, prope etiam desolata templa coe- 
pisse celebrari, et sacra solennia diu intermissa repeti ; passimque vaenire 
victiinas, quarum adhuc rarissimus emptor inveniebatur. Ex quo facile est 
opinari, qua? turba hominum emendari possit, si sit poenitentiae locus. — Plin. 
Epist., lib. x., ep. 97. 

TRAJANUS PLINIO, S. 

Actum quem debuisti, mi Secunde, in executiendis causis eorum qui 
Christiani ad te dilati fuerant, secutus es. Neque enim in universum ali- 
quid, quod quasi certam formam habeat constitui potest. Conquirendi non 
sunt. Si deferantur, si arguantur, puniendi sunt : ita tamen, ut qui nega- 
verit se Christianum esse, idque se ipsa manifestum fecerit, id est, suppli- 
cando diis nostris, qauamvis suspectus in praeteritum fuerit, veniam ex po- 
enitentia impetret. Sine auctore vero propositi libelli, nullo in crimine, 
locum habere debent. Nam et pessimi exempli, nee nostri seculi est.— Plin 
Epist. f lib. c, ep. 98. 



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